On the 1939 American Karakoram expedition to K2 he attempted to climb K2, the second tallest mountain in the world. He became embroiled in controversy after four members of the expedition died and the expedition leader, Fritz Wiessner, blamed Durrance. A book seeking to shed light on the event, K2: The 1939 Tragedy, was published in 1993. The authors, William Putnam, a former president of the Alpine Club, and Andy Kauffman, a former director, relied on a Durrance diary that surfaced for the first time fifty years after the event to place responsibility for the deaths on Wiessner. Ed Viesturs, in his book K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain, revisits all the available documentation and suggest instead that the unplanned decision to decommission all lower camps played a major role in the tragedy.