Hell Is Above Us: The Epic Race to the Top of Fumu, the World's Tallest Mountain (40 page)

They set off from Camp Two B on September 10
^th
at seven in the morning on their way to Camp Three. That camp would reside on a saddle along the Eastern Ridge, protecting them somewhat from the wind that had plagued them all along the lip. They would be at 28,000 feet then; only one thousand vertical feet away from Camp Four and another one thousand feet from the summit.

The intensifying rate of suffocation had become too much at this point. Even standing still was now an ordeal. Junk and Cole put on their breathing apparatuses which sped up their ascent considerably. They had a surfeit of oxygen canisters at their disposal due to the slow attrition of fellow climbers as well as the fact the Sherpa did not feel they needed such assistance quite yet.

Clouds had rolled in and hidden the way in front and behind them. They could see only about fifty feet in any direction. No precipitation was coming down yet, but everyone knew it was only a matter of time. The thinned ranks walked up into the grayness, step by laboured step, straining ever closer to the neumenon that is Fumu’s summit.

Chapter Fourteen: Vespers

Minds and journal entries were failing on both sides of the mountain. The sources of information which allowed the writing of this book were drying up as elevation increased. Chhiri Tendi was able to fill in many of the blanks from the Hoyt expedition in the interviews he so kindly granted me years later, but many other finer details must be surmised. Some facts about the overall adventure are certain. Hoyt and Junk were in a dead heat almost all of the way up from their respective base camps. Both parties were approaching the Eastern Ridge at the same time but from different directions. Both teams were running low on supplies, but not dangerously so. And both parties were experiencing crises of leadership, one physical and the other spiritual.

In the case of the Hoyt expedition, things were going utterly pear-shaped. Their leader had not been seen since the scree. Fear was in surplus. The temperature seemed to drop with every step up. A gauze of clouds - streaked red with the blood of Fumu’s magma - now settled on everything. The team had begun using bottled oxygen, but a large percentage of the canisters had been lost in a small landslide the evening before. They would have to conserve and still possibly run out before the push for the summit. God could not have spoken louder or enunciated more eloquently: Misfortune was imminent.

Early morning on the seventh, they walked along the “happy side” of Rauff’s Maw which was to the west of it and therefore closer to the summit. Their confused wanderings on the scree had reaped the serendipitous benefit of depositing them onto a route initially more difficult than the planned one, but then led to a less strenuous hike along the Maw and then to the Eastern Ridge. Although progress was slow, it was steady. The knowledge that a storm could roll in at any moment was enough to move them along.

The only positive in their lives at the moment had to do with diet. Some of the team members had switched exclusively to food prepared by Ferguson. With each meal, they listened to his Seventh-Day Adventist prayers and then ate deeply of the cleansing, nourishing sustenance. Even if it did not stick to the ribs as much as, say, tins of pemmican, Ferguson’s meals did rekindle the men’s feelings of well-being and general optimism. Wilde, who seemed the least likely to be attracted to novel things of any sort, had converted the quickest and the most absolutely. “I eat as if eech [sic] bite adds a day of life.”

Wilde would need all of the health he could manage. He was leader of this motley team until Hoyt returned or to the very end, whichever came first. Everyone was respectful and supportive of their temporary leader, but even so, Wilde seemed out of his depth. His usual stern bearing showed signs of weakness. His eyes darted about as if perplexed, trying to make decisions about the route. Being too conscious of the pressure to make a good decision, he often did not. No one called him on such things because no one wanted him to give up.

Exhaustion had ended most conversations. Chhiri Tendi was the one exception, still producing quips and tawdry riddles. The now mentally-deficient Americans did not laugh at his humor – which contained an improbable ratio of curses to proper words - but the other Sherpa did, and that was enough to goad on Chhiri Tendi. He walked in the back, barking out his expletives at a rate seeming impossible given the lack of air. Those in earshot up the line, including Drake and Chatham, and the four other Sherpa, were exposed to Chhiri Tendi’s banter all day. Those further up – Wild and Ferguson - were spared. “I could not stop,” Chhiri Tendi recalls. “I was nervous. And as I told you before, that is what I do when I’m nervous.” The circumstances being what they were, any jitters on the part of the team were well justified.

Above and unseen, slightly off to their left, was the summit, closer than ever now. The sporadic din of distant eruptions was certainly close enough now to bring a rumble to their stomachs. Black ash streaked portions of the snow field upon which they walked as if the mountain had adorned itself in war paint in preparation for battle. Despite these visual distractions, out of the corner of his eye, Chhiri Tendi came across something stuck in the snow near the edge of the Maw. No one in front of him seemed to have noticed.

“
At first all I could see was a small black tube jutting out of the ice. It did not look like a chunk of the black ash that occasionally crossed the landscape; it had harder angles than that. Definitely made by men. I walked over to it. I kicked it and it didn’t budge so I took out my axe and broke the ice around it. Now the thing gave way. I picked it up. It was a gun. A God damned gun! The metal was rusted from exposure to constant freezing and melting. But otherwise it looked pretty decent. I checked for bullets and indeed there were five fuckers in there. I decided not to announce my find as the Americans would want to discuss its origin, the reason for its being deposited here, what to do with it and so on. That would slow us down. I planned to tell the others when we got to Camp Two, but then forgot as other events on the way down became more important in my mind.”

There can be little doubt that what Chhiri Tendi had stumbled upon was the pistol of none other than Wolfgang Rauff. The Hoyt team’s location along the Maw corresponds quite closely with the location of the disaster as recalled by Rauff’s Sherpa. But if Rauff fell straight down while holding the gun, how did it wind up along the side of the Maw and not in it? The answer is unclear, except that perhaps the kickback of the gun removed it from Rauff’s hand and placed it on firmed ground behind him. That would also explain why Rauff’s gun shot – the one that brought about his expedition’s demise - did not find its target. Regardless of how it arrived at its current location, it was now the property of Chhiri Tendi, who placed the object in his backpack and did not think about it again for a time.

They approached the base of the Eastern Ridge, the future location of Camp Three, much earlier than expected. It was not even noon. As abhorrent a thought as it was, the team knew acclimatization was necessary. The thought was not only abhorrent due to lost ground, but also because the team would be submitted to more of Chhiri Tendi’s comedy act. “Had enough of Chhiri Tendi’s comments about women’s bosoms” Drake wrote that night. “Now actually squeamish at the thought of bosoms, something I thought impossible. Thanks a lot, Chhiri Tendi.” They dropped much of their equipment that would be required for Camp Three, rested, and then turned to descend back down to Camp Two despite their urge to remain.

They followed the Maw back down, looking out for the other side, for they knew once the other side came into view, it would mean the Maw was narrowing, and that would alert them to the proximity of Camp Two.

Chhiri Tendi finished up his rant with a rather saucy comment about the women from his home town of Thame. An actual laugh was heard that did not come from one of the other Sherpa. But then again, it did not come from the Americans either.

It came from across the Maw.

On the heels of the distant laugh came another voice, shushing the first. “My heart raced” Chhiri Tendi recalls. “It must have been Hoyt and Yuudai making their way around the Maw. No one else on the team had heard it. I yelled out into the grayness which caught the attention of the others. ‘Hoyt’ I cried. ‘Yuudai!’ There was no reply.” Chhiri Tendi told the team he had heard a laugh from the across the way. They thought he was being silly. How often had anyone seen Hoyt or Yuudai laugh, they asked. And how likely was it those two sourpusses would be laughing now given the situation? The team reasoned the more likely explanation was that Chhiri Tendi was desperate for an approving audience and had gone temporarily delusional.

Only slightly more than one hour after leaving Camp Three, Camp Two appeared out of the clouds below them. Everyone was now thankful they had decided to come down. “Exhausted” wrote Wilde that night. “Breathe little esier [sic] here. The air is a lover returned and I am soothed by her gentle kiss.” They ate their meals of either yams or pemmican and turned in early with the hope of awaking before first light and getting more mountain below them. They slept the sleep of the righteous. It would be the last time they acquired such rest on this adventure.

Hoyt and Yuudai had been without food for two days now. They had enough cooker fuel left to heat snow for drinking water, but that was all. Now they climbed at a clip reflecting their deprivations. The aging American, now certain this climb would be his last, had decided dying on a nearly hopeless climb upward would be better than surviving a return to Base Camp. Yuudai, who seemed to place duty over all else, stayed with Hoyt. He did not complain. He did not make recommendations. He remained silent and followed. At moments, one man would fall down with exhaustion and the other would help him to his feet. Hoyt wrote, “Yuudai tripped. Ice crack. Delayed getting up. He’d passed out. I tug the rope to wake him up. He gets up and walks again as if nothing happened.”

It was September the eighth and the day was ending. They had been climbing along the base of the Eastern Ridge since waking up, long, sad rests followed by short spasms of advancement. Given the nasty conditions, the only indication of day’s closing was bleakness getting bleaker. Grays turned to deep blues. And then blues became black. No snow was falling yet, but the wind was picking up and visibility was minimal.

Unbeknownst to the two climbers, they were not far from the location where the rest of their team had placed equipment for Camp Three. The team members had down climbed to Camp Two for the night, but canned meals and fuel awaited, as did oxygen. Should they continue another three hundred feet along the wall, they would find the equipment and many of their problems would be solved. Hoyt and Yuudai continued to climb in the darkness as if sensing that possibility.

They came to Rauff’s Maw. Unlike their colleagues, Hoyt and Yuudai were not on the “happy side.” They would need to cross in order to progress. But Hoyt had planned well. As you may recall, it was the other team members who had deviated from Hoyt’s original route – the route he had planned months ago and then solidified when looking up at Fumu from Base Camp. Hoyt and Yuudai themselves were still on route. The Maw at that time was certainly an obstacle, but not insurmountable. You see, the Maw narrowed at its top and bottom, and they were at its top now. A small pass existed between the chasm’s topmost point and the wall supporting the Eastern Ridge. It was through there they were heading now and it was just past there they planned to set up their tents for the night. And it was through there that materials for the actual Camp Three secretly awaited. What had been three hundred feet from Camp Three was now merely two hundred feet. In the dark they stumbled and gasped, moving ever closer to relief, to ambrosia, to reunion with the others.

The beginning of the Maw was now only feet away, down the slope to their left. The Eastern Ridge wall was to their right. This path between the two obstacles was roughly ten feet wide and made of smooth, unflawed ice with an occasional pile of wind-blown snow that had likely dropped down the cliff from the Eastern Ridge. They could not see the Maw in the darkness, but if they could, they would see what appeared to be a yawning chasm dropping down nearly one thousand feet into a bottom obscured by the curvature in her walls. Even if the time had been noon on a brilliant summer day, the bottom of the Maw would have remained dark, silent, and vigilant for live offerings.

The snow began. It blanketed them and the ice at their feet in an instant. With the snow it seemed the air had gotten even colder (if such a thing was possible). Certainly out of energy and filled with doubt about the likelihood of survival, Hoyt collapsed and gave out a terrible moan. He wrote that night, “Fustration [sic]. Despration [sic]. Father was right. Makes me mad. Toes sting. ”

On the ground, he began to pray out loud. It was not a humble prayer. He did not pray for his life. He did not pray for Yuudai’s life. He prayed for Junk’s death and an explanation for his current circumstance. His prayer rose in volume until it was calamitous. A wailing. A keening. A temper tantrum. Hoyt’s old anger was still alive, barking at the Heavens for answers and urgent, savage justice.

No matter how cathartic the prayer must have been to Hoyt’s soul, its impact on the outer world was devastating. A cataclysm, heard but unseen, with the din of one hundred battlefields was now coming from everywhere, easily drowning out Hoyt; a corresponding quake in the ground took Yuudai off of his feet.

Blinded by darkness, Hoyt and Yuudai had no idea what had just happened all around them, except that it felt and sounded apocalyptic. When all was quiet again, Hoyt, torch in hand, rose and walked forward cautiously. He came to a spot where the ground simply disappeared in front of him. Shining his torch downward, he saw no noticeable bottom. He followed the ledge of this new drop off. It kept curving to the left. Before long he had made a complete semi-circle and was back at the wall of the Eastern Ridge, but now behind Yuudai. “By the bowels of Christ!” yelled Hoyt. “We’re trapped!”