Hell Is Above Us: The Epic Race to the Top of Fumu, the World's Tallest Mountain (41 page)

They decided to wait for the light of dawn to fully assess their predicament and plan an escape. Conditions and space prohibited the construction of a tent. They were left with no choice but to bivouac into the snow freshly fallen all around them. Given the limitations available to them, they also had to place their new home right at the base of the wall. With snow coming down hard, the chances of a cornice coming loose on the Eastern Ridge and landing on them were astronomically high. Even if harm did not come from above, they had no guarantees the ground upon which they stood was intact. “We sleep in our grave” wrote Hoyt.

Once the structure was completed and they were inside, they found one unexpected comfort. The stone cliff supporting the Eastern Ridge made up one wall of their temporary home. It contained a slight crack, and out of that crack came a gentle warmth, possibly from some unseen vent. It tempered the biting air ever so slightly. Hoyt and Yuudai were still starving and lacking any energy, but curled up in their warm, down sleeping bags near Fumu’s exhaust, they had a brief respite from the cold.

Hoyt wrote hardly anything that night. Without question he was too weak to summon the will. Aside from the quotations mentioned earlier, he also wrote “Bless Yuudai. Saved food. A feast of pemmican.”

When morning of September ninth arrived, the storm broke just long enough to present our heroes with a horrible sight. Hoyt’s sonorous prayers combined with the new snow had apparently caused a widespread breaking up, and collapsing of, the ice fields. The Maw was now more of a valley with gentle slopes made of crumbled ice chunks and snow. What the Sherpa called “The Cat’s Eye” had dilated even more. The only part still holding fast was the six square feet upon which Hoyt and Yuudai stood. They now resided on a balcony hundreds of feet in the air, supported only by a tall, thick pillar of welded tuff. Their route was utterly obliterated. To carry on with the campaign, or even to retreat, they would have had to climb down an icy overhang followed by sheer, crumbly cliff. At the bottom, they would then have to climb up a sloping side to get out of the former Maw. Of course, climbing down the cliff would have been nearly impossible for climbers in perfect health. There was nowhere to go. They were trapped; trapped actors in a theater in the round, performing a tragedy to an audience of indifferent nothingness.

Down at Camp Two, the rest of the team looked up at the collapsed Maw. It was now more of a massive gulch with sides rising at approximately forty-five degree angles. Their route up to Camp Three, and Camp Three itself, were simply gone in the wreckage, buried by a slope of debris. At the top of the slope was a newly exposed spine of solid earth leading up toward the Eastern Ridge and summit. At the bottom of the slope were more nondescript chunks of ice, and then another slope rising up to what was the other side of the newly-expanded Maw. They had no idea whether the man who had brought them to Fumu was stuck under the debris somewhere. But again, as none of them had much love for the man – nor the Japanese fellow with him – no tears were shed.

Wilde would not be deterred pressing on. The collapse had certainly thrown a spanner into the works, but it did not preclude victory. He had an alternate plan almost immediately. Instead of retreating, they would attempt an even more aggressive route to the summit. Wilde reasoned that the trip to Camp Three the day previous had been much easier than expected. They had made the location of the planned Camp Three early in the day and had had enough time to climb down at a modest pace. And that had been in poor conditions.

“
We are going straight for Camp Four, today” he wrote. “Yes indeed. The penultimate camp. Today!” It was to their benefit the collapsed Maw had exposed a solid rib of rock heading almost directly from where they stood to the mammoth spine that is the Eastern Ridge. The rocky route did not seem to contain any tricky steps. It would certainly be a farther jaunt than Camp Three, but the inviting nature of the new path assured the men they could go the distance before nightfall. Wilde yelled “Breakfast and then we can’t waste another moment!” Wilde and Ferguson gobbled down one of Ferguson’s signature breakfasts of yogurt and yams. Chatham, Drake, and the Sherpa ate the more traditional climbers’ breakfast and suited up for battle. The team donned their supplemental oxygen equipment for the first time, seeing as today’s assault would bring them higher on the mountain than ever before…and by a long stretch. The four Americans and Chhiri Tendi began to climb up the new route, leaving the remaining Sherpa and Camp Two behind. Five men left. They were to be the “happy few” who would take turns attempting the summit only days from now.

It was not Chhiri Tendi who talked up a storm on the route, nor Chatham, whose wounds had finally quieted him. It was now Drake’s turn. He talked Chhiri Tendi’s ear off. The inventor was refreshed from a night at lower camps and felt like passing the time in discussion, or monologue depending how one looks at it. “Why did I have to be tied by rope to this one? The talk was non-stop. He was jawing about something he called a ‘picture radio.’ He envisioned that some day, technology would bring us to a place where we could transmit pictures through the air just as we do with sounds today. A box made by a man cannot do such a thing, I said. Only gods can transmit visions to people through the air. When a Sahib starts talking like that, you suspect the altitude has rogered his earhole and damaged his brain. Boy, did I turn out to be wrong. I watch Gunsmoke all the time now, and I doubt any god is sending me that crap. But to be honest I was hardly listening to Drake that day.”

Chhiri Tendi was too busy thinking about searching for Hoyt and Yuudai. The other team members were not concerned about their annoying leader and their unwelcomed Japanese guest, but Chhiri Tendi felt like he was failing in his job if he did not look for them. His eyes kept darting to the remnants of the Maw, looking for signs of movement among the collapsed slabs. He detected nothing.

The brief break in the clouds ended. Again the world disappeared, consumed by snow. Any increase in speed they may have obtained from the terrain was cancelled out by the weather’s bad turn. The rocks beneath their feet became treacherous almost instantaneously as they were covered in a thin but growing layer of fresh snow. The only positive was the protection from avalanches provided by the ridge.

Soon the situation got worse. Wilde and Ferguson, the two who had dined on the yam feast that morning, began to fall ill. Both men would take turns dropping to their knees, doubled over with stomach cramps. Soon afterwards, the two had made a terrible mess of their trousers. Drake and Chhiri Tendi caught up with the two sickly men. Chatham was already standing over them, imploring them to turn around. They refused. “It will pass” Ferguson was heard to say between stomach spasms. Chhiri Tendi responded, “Yes, and it will keep passing. You are going to dehydrate.”

The wind and snow increased until they feared a blizzard. Exposed skin was destroyed. Vision was wiped out. Footsteps became small and rare acts of falling forward. Despite the chaos, they could still hear intermittent eruptions getting closer. At one point, shortly after a disturbingly close eruption, a red, glowing ball the size of a rhino flew into view only feet away and hit the slope, skidding along and leaving a sooty streak as it went. Where it came to rest, God only knew. Perhaps it would make it all the way to Camp Two before stopping. Shortly thereafter, a lava bomb struck Chatham square in the chest, the explosion burning a hole in his coat and further scorching his face. In response, he did what any reasonable man would do. He howled in pain, dropped flat on the ridge, and stuck his face into the loose, new snow. When he had caught his breath, he turned over. Again, the hideous gargoyle refused to turn back. All his lip remnants could generate was, “-uck all! I go uh!” The sentiment was clear. He was proceeding no matter what the cost.

The weather had almost brought them to a complete halt when Chatham yelled from the front of the line “We -eer!” Indeed they had made it. They were standing on the Eastern Ridge; the confluence of the northern and southern routes; the last turn before the summit. The storm prevented them from seeing anything of interest. Realization of their location only came from the fact they were no longer going up and that the earth dropped off in front of them, likely a straight shot down into the Icy Bellows and the Oculus at the bottom. To their left, unseen but certainly heard, was the summit, less than one thousand vertical feet away, booming and raging and throwing things. Drake wrote that night, “Half expcted [sic] to see an arrowed sign, broken ratling [sic] in the wind spelling in crooked letters ‘Here be dragons.’”

Wilde moaned. He sputtered to the others that they should go back down several yards and set up Camp Four there. The wind on the Eastern Ridge itself was too great. They had to find some protection even if it was minimal. The frigid wind was damaging them, causing widespread frostbite right through oxygen masks and clothing. That night, all four Americans wrote separately in their journals of discolored toes possibly beyond saving. Chhiri Tendi told me in our discussion “I knew the toes on my left foot would have to be removed when we returned to civilization. The thought was not so much scary as it was sad. I liked my toes. They were good friends. And I remembered my mother, rarely a warm person, playing with them as a child. I would miss them.”

They climbed down off the Eastern Ridge to set up their camp of two tents. There was no protection to be found anywhere. The wind whipping over the slope had no unique, discernible quality as compared to the wind at the top of the ridge. With no option left they chipped away at the ground, grinding up ice chunks and using them to build a berm. They slaved away, almost unconscious with exhaustion. The ancient ice did not give easily under their axes. Their arms ached above their numb fingers. Each strike against the ground sent pain traveling through their bodies. Wilde and Ferguson stopped work almost immediately because of the abdominal cramps wracking their beings. Chatham (an invalid himself), Drake, and Chhiri Tendi did the lion’s share of work. When the berm was approximately five feet tall, they stopped and set up the tents leeward.

Once inside, Chatham, covered in wounds and frostbite from the ascent, fell asleep immediately, oxygen tank and mask still on. Chhiri Tendi had to pull it off of Chatham’s burnt, frostbitten face. The depth of Chatham’s slumber must have been profound, as dragging cold rubber away from burnt skin only caused a low moan. After aiding his fellow climber, Chhiri Tendi got into his bag, but did not sleep. His air-deprived, exhausted mind could not stop pondering Hoyt and Yuudai’s fate. “What kind of Sherpa was I?” Chhiri Tendi asked. “Actually, what kind of
man
was I? There were two members of my team missing. Sure they may have climbed down, but knowing Hoyt’s stubbornness, they didn’t.” Sleep never came. Physical and mental anguish stayed with him.

Drake was also sharing a tent with them that night because constructing a third shelter in such raw weather seemed excessive and potentially deadly. What’s more, the added warmth of another body in the tight space could only help.

Meanwhile, life in the other tent was as grim as a hospital ward for the terminally ill. Wilde and Ferguson were taking turns soiling them selves and throwing up out of the tent door. Sleep would not come for them either. In its stead, Unconsciousness finally arrived and relieved them of their pain. Calls out to them from the other tent went unreturned. Drake ventured over to see if Wilde and Ferguson were even alive. They were alive, but completely unresponsive to the sound of their names and a firm shake to the shoulder. All they did was shiver. Drake gave up trying to revive them because the stench was overpowering, and he had resolved he could help the two sick men better once he had some sleep under his own belt. But as a last gesture before leaving – possibly the only kind gesture anyone on the team had ever shown, he changed the two men’s trousers for them, cleaned up their unmentionables, and disposed of the mess out in the raging storm. The two men remained in a vegetative state the whole time they were being attended to. Thanks to Drake, they now had Dignity along with temporary Peace.

The wind and snow continued to pummel the tents, threatening to collapse or bury them at any moment. The din of the weather and the summit was deafening. The outer chaos and inner conflict taunted Chhiri Tendi. As night fell, he made a decision. “Even if it killed me, I was going out to find Hoyt and Yuudai. Sleep was not coming for me and I sure as hell was not going to waste any more effort looking for it.”

He suited up and walked out into an unwelcoming world.

Hoyt looked out over the darkening grey and then retired to the cave. He did not know the date. Time was no longer a property of the universe. There was only space, and very little of it. “Dearest Journal, Waiting for death. Won’t be quick. Warm in here and puddle to drink. May starve over weeks. Scared.” William Hoyt was actually scared. That is, he may have been scared many times in his life, but he was actually confessing to it in print.

As the snow in the cave melted from the warm vent in the rock, more of the vent became exposed and more warm air entered. It widened at the bottom so the
rate
of warm air coming into the space also increased. They knew this temporary luxury would soon give way to tragedy in the form of a collapse of their shelter.

“
Mr. Hoyt. I thought of something.” Hoyt concluded that the words were uttered by voices in his head. After all, Yuudai had not initiated a conversation since the airplane ride to Fumu. It came again; “Mr. Hoyt.” Yuudai was now rifling through his backpack with a ferocious urgency. Then he was pulling out a massive piece of fabric, white silk divided into sections by some machine’s stitch work. Hoyt was hallucinating from his deprivations. “A marshmallow?” he wrote in his journal. “If so, big enogh [sic] to feed us for weeks!”