Hell Is Above Us: The Epic Race to the Top of Fumu, the World's Tallest Mountain (10 page)

It took only a few months before the effects of Albright’s deeds were felt. Every object that had been built using his tools was slightly off. In his home town of Coventry, the new church clock stroked midnight at eleven twenty-five in the evening, and then earlier on each subsequent night. The locals were bewildered. Then the effects escalated tragically. A train derailed near Kiev. The roof of a factory collapsed in Brussels. As far away as Santa Fe, a small battalion of the Armies of the West were overwhelmed by Navajo fighters because their guns jammed. All told, seventy-seven people had died as a direct result of Albright’s “recalibrations.” As Albright put it in his writings, “The removal of Katherine compounded, removing other souls from the Earth. If I had gone on in my profession, I would have had to continually make the increments on the dividing engine fewer and fewer.”

Albright would not have the chance to recalibrate again. Local authorities from all affected countries quickly narrowed down the cause of the calamities. The British government sent in the police and had Albright arrested. Formal documents suggest Albright did not put up a fight. He was sent to prison for life although the death penalty had been seriously considered.

When the end came only two years into his sentence, prison guards found Albright resting peacefully on the floor, dead from unknown causes. In his folded hands was clutched the one object they allowed him to bring into prison – a small, wrinkled self-portrait of Katherine.

Albright had been in the middle of building his “off” instruments when he got a letter from India. It was from George Everest, who was finishing up the last measurements of the Great Trigonometric Survey of India. He needed the best theodolite possible, and he needed it quickly. A theodolite is a telescope that moves in measured amounts on both vertical and horizontal axes. The device is perfect for calculating angles such as the corners of a triangle. Some theodolites are small, but the one used on the Great Trigonometric Survey was gigantic - a monstrosity of cast iron and brass, weighing one thousand pounds. It had to be carried across the sub-continent by twelve men. Lambton and then Everest referred to it as “The Great Theodolite.” Because of accidents along the way and general wear and tear, in truth they had used several “Great Theodolites” over the decades, all built by William Cary of England. All but the last one were perfect replicas of each other, massive and meticulous. Then, near the very end of the Survey in 1847, a
preposterous disaster occurred.

George Everest was known as one of the most fastidious, detail-oriented, and professional surveyors of all time. But he had also been known for being arrogant, a glory-seeker, and most of all, a harsh employer. Everest would brook no mistakes, no laziness, no disagreement. While situated in Sikkim, waiting for the last measurements of the Survey to be taken, he caught word that several porters and researchers had become ill with malaria. He saw this as a sign of “personal weakness” on the part of the porters and researchers. Their sloth would delay the completion of the Survey, and Everest wanted nothing more than to get back to England. Then the porters died. This was more than Everest could take. He ran out of his tent yelling curses at the top of his lungs. He then picked up a flare used for surveying at night and set it off. But his rage was too great and he did not consider “aiming” at the night sky. The flare found the rump of one of the elephants. The elephant let out a bellow and broke its chain, making a run for the center of Darjeeling. It was before dawn and so no people were hurt. But many structures including permanent market stands were devastated. And most unfortunately for George Everest, this had been the elephant charged that morning with carrying the Great Theodolite, which was already strapped to its back. When Everest’s team found the object, it had apparently been knocked off the back of the beast by a thick magnolia campbellii branch and rolled down a series of stairs descending from a Hindu temple. It was bent far beyond repair.

Everest and his team had just finished measuring the enormous mountain that would later become his namesake. He had had only one patch of Himalaya left to measure – the one that included Fumu. Mail was sent to Albright, who was now considered the best designer of theodolites in the world. Albright wrote back saying he had been building a theodolite already, just as a test case for his new improved process for marking notches. It had been going quite well and he would be happy to give the Survey that one. This would also mean they would have it within only a few short weeks. All they could do was wait.

When it arrived, the team was weary and ready to go home. The measurements were done quickly. Dates on records from the survey at this time fall well before the date of Albright’s arrest. We can only assume Everest heard about it through the mail. Perhaps the fatigue was so great and the urge to be done so overwhelming they decided to ignore the facts. Who would really ever know or even care? Those mountains they were measuring were in the heart of Nepal, a place where no outsider was permitted. Their height would remain irrelevant. The team packed up and returned to England. After nearly half a century, the Great Trigonometric Survey of India was complete. The mountain named H24 would remain of little interest for a long time to come. It wouldn’t be until the end of the 1880’s when a handful of risk-taking European expeditions chose to enter Nepal illegally that Fumu began to take on its status among the climbing community as a greater challenge than either Everest or K2.

The first known expedition to Fumu was led by George Malick in 1881. He had heard rumors Mount Everest was the tallest mountain in the world, but had also heard it could be “climbed by the Queen in a fit of somnambulism” from fellow climbers. Put another way, the mountain was tall but not challenging enough. It is true Everest’s vertical rise is not very impressive. Most of its height comes from resting atop the Tibetan Plateau, like an average-sized child sitting on the shoulders of his exceptionally tall father. Malick wanted a challenge that would make England proud, so he picked the hardest mountain he could find.

He lost half of his team just getting over the Qila Pass and another quarter getting above the scree. The remainder of the team did surprisingly well given there was no precedent for what they were doing. Their ascent was not only the first up Fumu, but one of the first recorded ascents up any Himalayan peak. They were groundbreakers, and they were doing quite well at it. It was not until they started approaching the smoky summit things went haywire.

Some of Malick’s men claimed to hear other people lurking outside of their tents at night. Malick chalked it up to the effects of altitude on the brain. None of them were using breathing apparatuses, and no one yet knew the effects of such high altitude on a human being. “It only made sense that lack of oxygen might make a man quite daft” Malick wrote in his journal. But the altitude sickness theory failed to explain why two men were found one morning mutilated as if by animals. “Quimby’s right arm was gone up to the elbow. His lower jaw was also missing. Hirst’s stomach cavity had been emptied of all contents.” No one ever heard a scream.

The Sherpa pleaded with Malick to end the summit attempt and return to their homes. The mountain, they claimed, was haunted. Malick reasoned with them, explaining it was most likely some kind of wild animal living in the caves of the South Face. The Sherpa retorted that no animal could possibly live at this height and they wished to go home. Malick made a decision to send the entire expedition back down aside from himself. He would have a go at the top before turning around. Malick climbed off into the smoke and, according to the journal found in his backpack many years later, got lost almost immediately. He was never seen alive again. As disastrous an expedition as it was, Malick got farther up the mountain than any subsequent expedition until 1941, when Hoyt and Junk would make their own summit attempts.

Another notable attempt came in 1910, when a German team climbed Fumu from the north. The team was led by Josef Bruner, a field marshal in the German army who had an affinity for climbing mountains long before it was fashionable. Like anyone who hopes to enter Qila, they used the Qila Pass in the south, but then hiked along glaciers below the scree for four days until they were looking up at the Icy Bellows from the north. After losing two of his European team members to the scree, Bruner led the remaining team up the Eastern Ridge with the Icy Bellows to their right the whole time and the Oculus at the bottom waiting to swallow them should they fall.

Bruner was a peculiar fellow. He was “non-standard issue” as his colleagues in the military liked to say. When not in military uniform, Bruner was foppish. He would dress in the most fashionable tweeds and bowler hats of the day, and would carry around a black parasol made with the hide of an elk he had shot in the Alps. The parasol included a mahogany pole and solid gold handle. The dandy in Bruner did not disappear when tens of thousands of feet in the air scurrying up the side of a partially dead volcano in the Himalaya. After a long day of climbing, he would pitch his tent and then immediately don his best clothes and sip brandy. If the sun was out, no matter how cold, he sat in the snow with his parasol and did his brandy-sipping outside. This ritual was well known by German mountaineers and everyone found it quite charming. Bruner certainly enjoyed himself and simultaneously made a statement. “We are not animals,” he once noted to the newspaper
Tagliche Detroit & Familienblatter
. “We may visit the sanctuary of animals, but we will keep our decorum no matter what the situation.” This policy was all well and good until Bruner, holding tightly to his parasol on the East Ridge of Fumu, was blown hundreds of feet away from the ridge by an icy blast from the Bellows. His parasol went flat, and he fell thousands of feet to his death. The remaining team, completely terrified, made the decision to turn around and end the expedition. The Germans would not return until Rauff’s expedition in 1937.

Of the eight recorded attempts to summit Fumu before 1941, all eight failed and all eight ended in multiple deaths. Most deaths on the North Face resulted from wind gusts blowing climbers off of the East and West Ridges, and most of the deaths on the South Face resulted from falls into crevasses and “cannibals.” Other than Malick, and later Hoover, no one had reached the higher elevations where lava became a consideration. Sixty years would pass after Malick’s original attempt before a human being would actually stand atop Fumu, cursing the mountain’s indifference between short, pained breaths.

Chapter Five: Mount Everest

Discouraged by Nanda Devi, but by no means beaten, Hoyt decided to up the stakes and make a try for Everest in September of 1939. People new to climbing in the Himalaya rarely start with Everest. But every decision Hoyt made at this point was informed by his age. Fifty was a tiger in the tall grass, lurking just out of sight. He needed to move quickly or risk never tasting the glory of the ultimate mountaineering experience.

Immediately after the stomach spasms had subsided from the previous outing, Hoyt organized the same team, received approval from the 14
^th
Dalai Lama to enter Tibet, and secured passage on a ship to London. None of the men on Hoyt’s team risked losing their jobs leaving work on two consecutive journeys. They were all moneyed to the monocle, and could plan an infinite holiday if that was their heart’s want. The climbers sponsored their own trip this time. By the end of summer, Hoyt and his team found themselves at Everest’s northern Base Camp, looking up at the fabled face of Sagamartha.

No one had conquered Everest yet. Then thought to be the tallest mountain in the world, people had certainly tried. The British had the first designs for Everest in the early 1920’s. With both Poles of the Earth conquered, The United Kingdom wished to conquer “The Third Pole.” But access to Everest was limited. Even though the British lorded over what is now modern-day India, Burma, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, Nepal’s borders were closed. Any British expedition would have to make its way northeast to Tibet from India and then
turn almost completely around
to approach the mountain from the north.

In 1921 a young George Mallory along with Charles Howard-Bury and a large expedition of fellow Brits and Sherpa made a reconnaissance mission to the area. Mallory, like Hoyt and Junk who followed, had never climbed in the Himalaya when he set his sites for Everest. Thanks to his efforts and the rest of the team of photographers, surveyors, and botanists, the world learned much about the mountain. Most importantly for the world of mountaineering, the expedition found the best routes for reaching the base of the mountain at a point where the summit could be attempted.

The British would try for Everest seven times officially before the war began, including the tragic 1924 expedition in which Mallory and Andrew Irvine were lost near the summit. By the beginning of World War II, no one had reached the top, but many had come painfully close – some within hundreds of feet. Landslides, altitude sickness, sudden storms, and simple exhaustion ultimately took its toll on all comers. Worse still, these brave souls climbing the northern side of Everest had no idea Fumu lurked on the other side, mocking their misguided efforts to reach the top of the world. Even those who gazed upon her from near Everest’s summit – either because of distance or dizziness from altitude, or both - had no idea Fumu was dominant.

By late 1939, England’s Royal Geographic Society was in a damned rut. They were practically drooling to get a man to the top of Everest. The defeats were bad enough, but now the Germans were making their moves on the Himalaya. Hitler was already out of line on the battlefields of Europe. The Brits did not want him getting the best of them in Asia as well. It would be an absolute coup to reach the top of Everest, the tallest mountain in the world (or so it was believed at the time), before the Germans reached the top of Nanga Parbat, known to be the ninth tallest mountain at the time.