Hell Is Above Us: The Epic Race to the Top of Fumu, the World's Tallest Mountain (44 page)

“
I prepared for the blade upon my neck. But that was not to be. I felt a spastic, convulsion in the small of my back. It had a mechanical quality to it. I heard metal snapping against metal and springs unwinding. This was followed by a feeling of intense heat in the same location. The hand holding my hair slacked as did the one holding the knife. The legs around my legs did not seem to be there any more. Blood and saliva dripped onto the snow next to my head.

“
The metal and heat led to only one conclusion: My assailant’s movements had deployed the second ‘magic rope’ which had been located in my backpack. The man was impaled through his stomach. Most of him had stayed put but his legs had been lifted off the ground about a foot. I did not know any of these details until I turned on my side and slid out of my backpack. I have never seen a man so dead in all of my life. He was run through by my invention. His gut had been catapulted elsewhere (I luckily never ran across it).

“
All was silent now. The other Cobras were now dead or unconscious. I went back into the tent, curled myself into a ball, and wept. Chatham was next to me, still passed out. I covered him with his sleeping bag. I lit a cigarette with shaking hands and drew off of it with abandon.

“
My head was not clear. I could not concentrate on anything relevant; anything pertaining to my survival. The altitude and shock had done their damage. I laid down, empty of energy. My thoughts darted to arbitrary subjects like my dead wife, the secretary I had had an affair with at GM, and a balloon I had won as a child at a fair in Lansing that popped and left me in tears. These thoughts would occasionally be interrupted by visions of half-eaten men and guttural sounds of problematic digestion. But through all of these visions, one thread remained consistent – a voice telling me it was time to go down. There was no question at this point. No summit was worth this. It was time to go down. I slowly realized that consistent voice was Chatham’s. I opened my eyes and saw him lying next to me. He was practically dead, but he was croaking out the word like an incantation that might have the power to transport, ‘Down…down…down.’

“
I don’t know how much time passed after that before I heard two familiar voices outside getting louder and closer. The talk turned to yells as they came upon the sight of our corrupted camp. When these people came through the tent flaps, I could not identify them because they were replaced in my head by hallucinations. One was the choke mechanism I had designed for the 1938Buick Y-Job. The other was a carrot. The carrot came to me and called my name. The choke mechanism went to Chatham and shook him. I responded by simply saying “Down.” The carrot understood immediately. “They need to descend. They are in shock.” The choke mechanism slapped Chatham to clear his head, but the strike to his burnt face caused more than consciousness. It caused him to scream and flail wildly. To my hallucinating mind, Chatham was now Al Jolson. Jolson screamed and convulsed in anguish. I began to cry again.

“
The carrot, now an ivory bishop from my childhood chess set, boiled tea outside and returned to administer sips to me. My head came back. It was Hoyt and Chhiri Tendi. They had returned! They were alive... frostbitten on their faces, but otherwise alive. I caught my breath as best I could and explained the events of the morning. I did not realize it, but the entire day had almost passed. The sun was setting outside. I grew terrified. What if more of these ghouls were coming?

“
Time was now of the essence. Chatham was very sick and I was not much better. The lack of air and the bitterly cold temperatures were slowly killing us. Hoyt knew this and set about tying up Chatham in his bivvy sack. Once ropes were secured around him, Hoyt handed the end of the rope to me. ‘Chhiri Tendi and I are going to continue to the top. You must go down with Chatham.’ He seemed disinterested in doing the noble thing and giving up the climb to aid us. He pointed the way down the mountain (as if I didn’t know which way was down) and went about setting up his tent for the night amidst the puddles of frozen blood.

“
Down we went, Chatham moaning while I lowered him. I was trying to let out the rope for him with hands reduced to useless ice claws. I descended through the night, not stopping for rest. I would let out the rope and drop Chatham into the darkness, hoping each time the ruined Texan would come to rest on some sort of ledge before the entire rope had been exhausted. We were lucky. He always did come to rest on something. When we came to the cliff where my “magic rope’ had failed (we missed Camp Two entirely), I lowered him down with the utmost patience and care. When the rope slacked and I knew Chatham was at the bottom, I rappelled down . The sun rose. We saw Camp One. The Sherpa there waved to us and I collapsed in relief.

“
All of my efforts with Chatham had paid off. He was still with us. The surfeit of air at this lower altitude had filled him with fresh life. He started to talk to the Sherpa telling them the trip down the mountain in the sleeping bag reminded him of a mudslide he had once experienced in the jungles of Peru. For once, I was thrilled to hear his voice.

“
The Sherpa tended to us masterfully, seeing to our frostbite and wounds as best they could. Looking down at myself, I realized my return to society would not be pleasant. At least half of my body was ravaged by frostbite. Surgery would be required to remove much of me. The cannibals had not touched my flesh, but Fumu had eaten his share. I will be a cripple.

“
Now I sit here at advanced Base Camp at the bottom of the scree, two days after the slaughter. I look up at Fumu and see the clouds are rolling in yet again. I cannot even imagine what is happening to Chhiri Tendi and that bastard Hoyt right now. For Chhiri Tendi, I pray for only good things. May he reach the top unscathed and then descend safely. For Hoyt, I pray the mountain’s ridges pull up from their earthly shackles like great arms and strangle the man to death.”

Chapter Seventeen: The Eastern Ridge

September 11th. Misery held sway on the Eastern Ridge. Junk and Cole trudged forward with inexplicable effort. There was no way of accounting for the energy reserves they were now consuming. Had they tapped into some heretofore unknown inner well of Hope or Delusion or Wrath that made their current actions possible? Were they moving forward now like automata, their bodies advancing out of habit even though consciousness had jumped ship long ago? We cannot know. All that is available to us are the facts surmised from journal entries, local descriptions of the day’s weather, and our own personal experiences facing improbable adversity.

What the storm of the past several days had deposited on the Eastern Ridge must have felt less like snow and more like a frigid swamp. It lay in drifts up to their waists. Junk, who led the way at this point, would make efforts to clear it with his hands and axe, but this proved too tiring. He needed to basically fall forward with each step in order to move through it. And even though the sun now shone through clouds of blown snow, the wind made life miserable. It must have permeated their clothing and chilled their cores. Cole’s frostbite had gotten worse. His cheeks were black. The fingers within his right glove were immobile. Although tethered to Junk, he trailed behind his leader by a full rope’s length. Junk would feel the rope jerk taut as Cole would collapse in exhaustion. But each time, he would get up again and continue.

They travelled as close to dead center along the ridgeline as possible. The north side of the ridge, to their right, was hidden by cornices jutting out over the North Face and the Icy Bellows below. Straying from their route even a touch in that direction could mean a fall of thousands of feet. However, should they overcompensate and walk too close to the sheer cliff to their left, crumbling ice could give way and send them down into the ruins of the Maw, also thousands of feet below.

The din of the volcano now drowned out all other sound. Even when speaking in close proximity, the entire content of one’s lungs was required.
On occasion, smoking volcanic bombs of all shapes and sizes – cylindrical, bread crust, cored - dropped from the sky or rolled out of the cloud along the ridge. The falling debris left the snow pack dotted with holes of varying size, each one ringed with sooty ice, and some expelled wisps of smoke that would get caught up in the high winds immediately upon exit. Sometimes a piece of debris would hit a climber, but so far the pieces that had made contact were small and caused no problems other than leaving marks on clothing.

Pasang Dolma
climbed several yards behind Cole. Unlike the Americans ahead of him, Pasang Dolma carried much of the weight of that evening’s camp on his back. The weight slowed him down, but not much. He was strong and experienced. According to Junk’s notes, the Sherpa showed no indications of exposure to the mountain’s inhumane conditions. He did not have any frostbite. He did not suffer from altitude sickness. Granted, he was tired, but he seemed game to go forth. The same could be said about the four dyspeptic Sherpa. Pulling up the rear, they never relented. There were no pauses in their stride, only monotonous progress. They may have had the personalities of demented, cantankerous old gammers, but they were vital to the goal of establishing high camp.

And high camp was where they were headed. It would place them just below the permanent cloud of the summit, where the ground would be equal parts snow and ash whorled together like marble, the sunlight would never shine through, and Hope would be as scarce as air.

If Junk was despondent over the deaths of Morrow, Taylor, and Fenimore, and the likely deaths of McGee and River Leaf, we cannot know. More likely his brain was not capable of such consistent thoughts at that point. The same could be said regarding Cole and his lost academic writings. His focus must have been exclusively on taking the next step and forcefully ignoring his growing frostbite. Even though the entire team wore supplemental oxygen at this point, thinking through things rationally was still difficult.

Rationality would have helped because at approximately 11 am, a choice needed to be made. The ridge split in front of them into two ridges that paralleled one another rather closely. From the writings of Hoover’s team a few years back, they knew the ridge to the right would end abruptly after one hundred yards or so. The ridge to the left provided a straight shot to the cloud and the summit therein, but the ridge was steep and narrow. It was in between the two ridges that the other choice laid. It was the beginning of “Hoover’s Route” where Chhiri had witnessed Hoover’s decapitation. You may recall that it starts out pleasant enough, gradual, smooth and protected by ridge walls on both sides. But then it whittled down to almost nothing, merely a narrow ledge scarring the north face like a varicose vein. That was the ledge where Hoover had had his head jettisoned into the blue. Walking such a ledge would be risky, not only because it was as skinny, fragile, and vicious as a scorned mistress, but also because the wall above it rose at 100 degrees, meaning the climbers would have to lean out over the void. If the men
could
get past that ledge, then the route theoretically met up with a massive couloir which provided an easy, staircase-like path into the cloud and then the summit.

So there was the choice. Junk could choose straight and visible, but steep. Or he could choose meandering, gently sloping with one nasty ledge followed by
terra incognita
. No journal entries exist from this portion of the climb, but one must assume the choice he ultimately made was not considered too deeply. For as we now know, the condition of brain cells at 29,400 feet is frozen, slow, and depleted of sparks; certainly not conducive to rumination. Junk had lived, eaten, and breathed long shots his entire life. Now he chose the safe bet. He went for straight and steep, which in this case was the known quantity…at least up to the point of the permanent cloud. The “decision” made, the team pressed on, digging into the deep snow straight ahead of them, moving closer to where they would place Camp Four.

At about 6 pm, with the sun setting, the men dug in and set up their tents, canvas flapping violently in the high wind. They would try to sleep for six hours, and then Pasang Dolma, Cole, and Junk would leave the dyspeptic Sherpa behind and make for the summit. If all went well, they would be atop Fumu by sunrise. Then, triumphant, they would turn and make their way back to the distant world of laughter, women, and draughts – a place that must have seemed mythical and impossible to souls stuck in such a raw Hell.

No one could have possibly slept that night through the cold and the caterwauling of the mountain. Ejecta shot forth from the earth’s deep places, barreling into the sky then landing on and around the tents. Small holes were scorched into the tent, allowing cold air to blow in. Sleep must have been even more difficult to come by because, in a way, they were already sleepwalking through their waking life. Sleep would not be recognizable as something different, made of unique stuff. Any dreams would have included climbing and ice and loud noise, and rising from slumber would have included the same.

Junk made one brief entry that night in his journal. The garrulous socialite wrote: “Leaf. McGee. Mom. Hoyt. End of this is nigh.” He also added “I feeling light [sic].” He may have meant that he felt lightheaded but was too exhausted to finish the thought.

Some time just prior to midnight, Junk and Cole heard yelling from the Sherpa’s tents. Pasang Dolma was incensed about something, throwing a wobbly which was directed at the other men in his tent. For the first time, Junk and Cole heard the dyspeptic Sherpa raise their voices at their leader. That they were rebelling against the orders of their sardar was odd enough, but odder was the fact that they no longer seemed to be speaking Sherpa. The new tongue was foreign to the Americans, still possibly of Nepalese origin, but new. The yelling stopped as quickly as it had started. “After what seemed like a long spell, we heard Pasang Dolma’s voice right outside of our tent” Junk wrote later. No fear of being heard by the dyspeptic Sherpa, “he told Cole to run. Cole? Why Cole? Why not me? We both scrambled to get our boots, packs, and oxygen on.”