Hell Is Above Us: The Epic Race to the Top of Fumu, the World's Tallest Mountain (50 page)

But perhaps the boon then was psychological, stemming from inside their hearts? That is possible, but without the climbers’ testaments in ink, we cannot know. There is no Truth to the matter if the evidence does not exist. The mountain’s experience and remembrance of the ascent is any bit as valid as those of the climbers. As a matter of fact, in an interview I conducted with Mano the man-child several years later, the human oddity recounted to me what Fumu’s experience likely was. He felt it was actually more important than the perspectives of the two men whose lives were fleeting like all men’s. After all, Mano said, Fumu was the one who would outlive us all and become the de facto keeper of the tale:

“
Fumu says: I am weary. I am working now and I will never stop working. I must keep growing. Spitting red fire in the air to cool and grow. I cannot ever rest – ever – because the unfeeling Wind never stops and it will have its way with me. It will wear me down to no more than a knoll in time and so I must work and never rest. I must keep growing. The wind cannot conquer me even though it will in time. And then there is the Earth below me, indecisive and erratic. It may boost me up to even greater heights or without warning it may crack and swallow me whole. Is it my friend against the Wind or is it the friend of my enemy? There is no truth to it…not even the equivocal Earth knows. It will continue to vacillate to the beat of some cosmic rhythm hidden from my sight. I cannot trust Her, and so I must work.

“
But what’s this? What’s this irritation upon my brow? What are these insignificant scurriers who come to bother? I see. It is Man, come every season to suck at my horrible teat with full knowledge I have nothing to offer. Do they not know I can shake them off as a horse does a fly? Do they not see me shake off the others around them and with them? You are my children, all of you; children of the big world, made of the same stuff as the big world. But you are an irritation. Can you not see how busy I am as you sit atop my head? I love you, irritation, but I have much to do. Go from me or I will shake you off. Find what you need elsewhere. Go and do not return. I am busy. You are mine, and I love you, but I am tired and I am busy. Go.”

Perhaps hearing the mountain, Hoyt and Junk decide to try and live. In the excitement of racing to the top, the two had forgotten their flags. It did not matter to them now. They took a cross from Hoyt’s pocket, a hip flask from Junk’s, and a book of unspeakable sketches Chhiri Tendi had tied to them, and jammed all three into a narrow, deep crag at the summit. And with that done, they turned to drag themselves down Fumu.

PART THREE: THE DESCENT / ASCENSION

Chapter Twenty-One: The Tragedy

On September 15
^th
, 1941, the United States was girding itself for inevitable conflagration. One week earlier, the U.S.S. Greer had been accidentally destroyed and sunk by a German U-Boat. Hitler had ordered the invasion of Leningrad. Despite the Neutrality Act, Roosevelt and his generals deemed it legal and imperative to send armaments and other materials to the British fighting in the Pacific Theatre. The World was witnessing the Tsunami of War growing and reaching its crest.

Hoyt and Junk knew nothing of this. They were helping one another down the mountain. They were both crawling. Tied off to one another and in single file, they likely looked nothing like newly-minted victors, but rather like a defeated and captured military column on their way to the camps. Hoyt was in front, and at times he was dragging Junk down. Then Junk would awaken and aid their progress as best he could.

They had had no problem getting out of the cloud thanks to the advice of Chhiri Tendi. To be sure that is good news. However, the cloud had had its own cruel benefits in terms of promoting human survival. If one did not get lost in the cloud and slowly suffocate or die of necrosis, and if one was able to dodge a disintegrating shower of lava to the face, then one was protected from the killing cold by the killing heat, and vice versa. Not ideal to be sure, but still something upon which to be appreciative in the center of Hell. But now they were out of the cloud and so the relentless cold had returned unfettered. The sun that shone provided no solace. It was too distant and its effect impotent. The frostbite on Hoyt’s face had blackened him and swelled him so he no longer looked like an aristocrat but rather like a bushman. His fingers were now frostbitten and they swelled up like bangers on the cooker. Swallowing the pain, Hoyt continued to use those hands to move them forward. The snow was easily four feet deep, so Hoyt had to leverage the routes he and Junk had made on the way up. The oxygen they had received from Chhiri Tendi was long gone. Each breath must have been like a garroting.

They reached Junk’s high camp just after sunrise. But what could they do now that they were there? They were too weak to do anything other than sleep in the nearest tent; but things being as they were, sleep at this point only meant death. But sleep they did. If only a single Sherpa were there to attend to them, to pamper them, to save them.

As fate would have it, Pasang Dolma was there to do just that. It seems Pasang Dolma had had no intention of darting off at the behest of the Nepalese Cobras. He had walked down to Camp Three but he had turned around and made his way back up in the hopes of surprising the Cobras and saving his charge. The high camp had been empty upon his return. Any attempt at heroics had passed. But now, only minutes before he had planned to climb down the lip of the Bellows again, this time for real, he discovered Hoyt and Junk returning from the summit. Overjoyed, he lit his cooker and melted snow to make tea. A container of
foie gras
performed the role of breakfast. These comforts went a long way to revive the two helpless creatures. After preparing the meal, Pasang Dolma suggested they all go down immediately. There was no time to lose as each moment spent at this altitude would continue to chip away at their condition, and Hoyt and Junk were now only slightly further from death after Pasang Dolma’s kind repast.

Now able to walk, albeit slouched over, Hoyt and Junk and Pasang Dolma lashed themselves to one another and climbed down again. However, because of the dire condition of the Americans, Pasang Dolma chose to take the southern route down. It was more challenging, but it was shorter, and according to Hoyt, his team’s equipment would still be set up and that would facilitate their descent.

They made rapid progress now, passing the location of the cannibal attack (Hoyt had to avert his eyes) and proceeding down the snowless spine that now defined the top of the western wall of Rauff’s Maw. The going was easy and the increase in oxygen was reviving the men. Even the weather was on their side, with the sun strong and little wind. Snow to their left and right melted. The rock upon which they walked was wet, but featured enough to prevent slippage. They still walked with laboured steps, their shoulders still slouched, and they still needed to stop every few feet to rest (and cough, and moan, and grit their teeth, and spin their arms in futile attempts to revive circulation). Pasang Dolma was patient with them. He brought up the rear and spoke words of inspiration. “We are almost at Hoyt’s next camp! Food and shelter and Sherpa await!” And only hours after passing Camp Four - the sight of the cannibal massacre – Camp Three came into sight below them, resting on the precipice of the cliff where the “magic rope” had failed.

Nearing the camp, Pasang Dolma finally became restless. He detached his rope from the others and walked briskly ahead. “I wish to prepare the camp for your arrival” he said to Hoyt and Junk. “This ridge is not technically difficult. You should be alright.” And with that, Pasang Dolma scurried past the sahibs, waving his hands in the air, hoping to grab the attention of the Sherpa below. He mixed brisk walking and glissading to improve his pace. Within two minutes he was one hundred yards ahead of them.

Now alone and healthy enough to speak, the two men spoke. They spoke like friends. One asked the other how he would return to the States.

“
I am not sure. You?”

“
Broke.”

This got the two onto the topic of money. Hoyt confessed in a rather relaxed fashion that he had cheated Junk out of the bet at the Presidentials and that he would reimburse him as soon as they reached home. “And should I not make it home alive, there is another source of money for you, Aaron…if I can call you Aaron.”

“
Sure.” Junk replied.

“
The cave under the Qila Pass you so sneakily walled up.” Hoyt began.

“
The cave I-? Oh right. Sorry about that. No hard feelings, pally!”

Hoyt winced slightly. “No. Not at all, I suppose. Anyway, you may want to take that tunnel back.”

“
Why?” Junk inquired. “What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?”

“
Everything, you crafty old wolf. Everything.”

Hoyt told Junk of the gold lining the walls of the ancient lava tube, not to mention the ease with which a team of explorers can walk along its pahoehoe floor. “Much easier than climbing over the pass. Just don’t bring any pack animals” Hoyt added.

Junk was in awe. What information for his mortal enemy to share! Junk’s financial worries were over and knowledge of this made Junk walk a little easier, a little more upright despite the damages Fumu had inflicted. However, Junk never said “Thank you” to Hoyt. That may have been too difficult to do. But we can assume both men had an understanding of what had just passed. They were clearly willing to act in a kind manner towards one another at this point, but kind words would be another thing entirely in this, the most masculine of realms. Should the world ever bring these two to the point of kissing for some preposterous, unimaginable reason, they would still be calling each other ghastly names when coming up for air. Such is the way of Man in our times.

The sun was nearly going down over Asha’s shoulder. The view must have been lovely; to one side of them, a tall, vertical cliff that happened not to collapse with the rest of the maw and now offered a sweeping vista of a world bathed in orange light. On the other side of them, the setting sun and a long blue shadows cast by distant peaks. The men were getting much closer to Camp Three where a good dinner and long sleep awaited them. They could nurse their ailments for a time and then, perhaps as soon as noon tomorrow, they could be at base camp.

Now was Junk’s turn at kindness. Hoyt had been speaking about the challenges facing him on the voyage home. “Possibly I am not returning to the United States at all. If I do not have this one gentleman with me when I get to Calcutta, I will be killed by a group of mercenaries in the employ of the Japanese. And that one gentleman is dead. My selfishness allowed him to die. And what is the cosmic recompense for my behavior? I will never make it home to set things right with my wife.”

Junk replied, “I may have your lift home.” He went on to explain that the pirate Gary Cooper would be waiting for them at the Calcutta train station on November 1
^st
. “That whack job will definitely take on more passengers if we drop a pile of gold in his mitts and give him assurance there’s more where that came from.”

What once had been a competition of escalating brutality between Hoyt and Junk was now becoming quite the opposite. Good deeds were spiraling out of control. An unspoken challenge was in the works. Outdo the kindness of the other man! Who would ultimately check mate the other and perform the ultimate act of kindness? And how wonderful are things when we are asking ourselves such questions?

The thing about descending a mountain is that threats to life and limb are not suspended. The summit does not herald the end of trouble. The couloirs, cornices, and cliffs do not “shut off” like carnival rides at midnight. If anything, the environment has become even more treacherous because the men are more physically spent than they were on the way up and also less focused on the task at hand. There is a final problem making descent hard. As the author Laurence Gonzales so keenly pointed out in the field of aviation, landing an airplane is harder than taking off because “takeoff is optional. Landing is mandatory.” A man climbing a mountain may change his mind. If things become too daunting, he can make the rational (if not cowardly) decision to back out. But another man at the summit has no such luxury. He simply
must
descend.

At roughly three o’clock in the afternoon, not more than one hundred yards from Hoyt’s Camp Three, Junk took a bad step. The air was cooling as evening approached, turning the water on the rocks into a sheen of veer glass. Junk’s left foot did not come down properly, the ankle bending outward. His legs quickly split from one another until his groin touched rock. He then began an uncontrolled slide sideways. He was wearing no crampons and his axe was tied to his rucksack because there had been no deep ice or snow on their chosen route to camp. But the moment Junk had slipped down off their route the world became nothing but ice and snow. His glissade sent him at top speed toward the edge of Rauff’s Maw. True, the sides of Rauff’s maw were now mostly gentle slopes of ice chunks since the collapse one week earlier, but Junk had chosen an unfortunate spot to slip where the maw had maintained its awful integrity. One moment he was barreling down a short slope and then the next he was going over the edge of a three hundred foot drop into the remains of Rauff’s Maw. When the slack in the rope attaching him to Hoyt was gone, it snapped taut around Junk’s harness and his fall was arrested. Hoyt, being the consummate professional, had instinctively laid flat on the ground the moment his partner had begun to slide. Hoyt gripped whatever features of the ground he could in the heat of the moment.