Hell Is Above Us: The Epic Race to the Top of Fumu, the World's Tallest Mountain (15 page)

As the men of the two Everest expeditions descended the mountain, the world around them was descending into fire. September 1939 saw Hitler’s invasion of Poland and England’s entry into the war. The Blitz would follow within a year’s time. All but the Sherpa on these expeditions would have to navigate a brutal landscape to get to their respective homes. But although the world around them was at war, and despite the fact their own nation would enter the fray in only a few years’ time, Hoyt and Junk would remain indifferent. The only war that mattered to them was their own, and it was only one more insult away from the final battle.

On the way down the mountain, moving from camp to camp, Hoyt had no choice but to tell the Sherpa of Junk’s fate. Many of them immediately responded by getting geared up and climbing up to the next higher camp to see if they could help in some way. Tired, defeated, and bitter beyond his ken, Hoyt was now looking down at the rocky southern Base Camp. It was only three days after the drama on the Western Ridge. He had made amazing time on the way down.

About one hundred yards before reaching the tents, he came across the alleged frotteurist Browning, oblivious to the presence of another person. Back turned to Hoyt, Browning was geared up for climbing except he wore no trousers. Fishnet stockings rose from his boots to his thighs. “He was singing an American jazz standard to himself (“Living Easy”) and pointing to an invisible audience. There was no camera this time. When I got close enough for him to hear me, the Brit turned round. He was in utter shock at my presence. The shame burned brightly in his eyes. But I am sure mine burned brighter. This man, whoever he was, must have been sent by the Lord himself to remind me who I had become. A freak, stripped of all Dignity. I looked at him in shock and terror, as if looking in a mirror at my true Nature. After what seemed like an eternity of failed thought, the half-naked man yelled at me ‘I can explain!’ Perhaps he could. But could I?”

Interlude: July 14, 1881

Roughly 25,000 up Fumu, sitting alone in his tent at Camp Five, George Malick wrote in his journal. He wrote more than usual and spent what little energy he had left on topics more expansive than the day-to-day drudgery of climbing the mountain. The lucidity of the prose suggests he wore his oxygen mask in order to retain focus. One cannot help but read his entry on that day and think George Malick was aware of his coming demise:

“
I remember as a boy being on holiday with my family at Blackpool. We went there quite regularly. Specialists claimed the salt air provided therapy for my mother’s manic prostration. Perhaps I was five years old. I was a small, frail child. The cold weather of England paired with my sensitivities did not permit a soak in the ocean. I spent my hours playing in the sand. I would find a stick and write messages I hoped would be read from far across the sea and across the spandrels of time by the ghost of Henry Morgan. I would let the cold waves roll in over the tops of my feet and when they rolled out, it looked as if I was moving backwards. The thrill of that sensation never wore off, no matter how many times I did it. But my greatest joy on those excursions was building castles. They were glorious structures. Ten towers. Motes. Outer walls and inner walls. Flags of seaweed. Windows crafted using the poke of a finger. To this day, those castles are the source of some of my greatest pride.

I recall one time, I had finished a particularly exquisite masterpiece when my father walked over to review my work, which he usually did not do. As always, I was silent in the presence of Father. He stood over me in his Sunday suit, as tall as a mountain, his eyes taking in every side, corner, stairwell, and gate. “You are not done boy” he said through his moustache. I was confused. Clearly everything was there. I reviewed my work. Nothing was missing. I had even placed an extra gate outside of the mote. Then he explained. “What about the roads leading away from the castle? Where are you to go and how are you to get there? And while you are at it, you should start digging a hole. You will need passage to the Orient. I hear they have the world’s most delectable teas.”

It was at that moment I understood the heart of the Englishman. We are restless and hungry. The Englishman must expand outward. He must consume all. It is a wonder the Empire does not suffer from gout given all of our incessant gobbling. We consume and grow and then without wiping our mouths we consume and grow even more. “The American Thomas Payne be damned,” says the Englishman. “An island will rule continents”.

How big must we get? We consume countries, sub-continents, poles, and mountains. Is the goal to be everywhere all of the time and control everything? Have we deluded ourselves into believing we are in the process of transforming into gods? We proceed as if one day, the entire world will be part of the Empire and every living person an Englishman; and we will have no where to go but the celestial bodies; and we will conquer them too; and then we will meet the Deity himself who will greet us by saying “How good of you to finally arrive! I have been so lonesome in my omnipotence and look forward to giving up this monotheistic rubbish. All men can be gods, from the lowly bushman to the Queen! Would you please join me in steering the Universe on its holy course to Perfection?”

Folderol.

Yet here I am, in a tent on the back of a frozen, angry giant, lacking any basic comfort, far from everything I should hold dear, all in the name of my father’s – and my country’s – quite mad endeavor.”

Two days after writing that entry, Malick looked back at his men. They would not be joining him as he walked headlong into the filthy cloud hovering and spitting ash only a few hundred feet above them. Thousands of miles they had travelled for this moment. But an unspeakable Fear, more powerful than their pride, had gotten the better of those around him. Malick wrote in his journal, “Each expedition member and each Sherpa looked back at me with an expression suggesting they had seen a ghost.” But they had not. They had seen cannibals.

Or at least they had convinced one another they had had a run-in with a herd of cannibals some time in the night. What had been done to their colleagues Quimby and Hirst was enough to make almost anyone reconsider their priorities. Down climbing only hours away from the summit seemed reasonable. Maybe home and hearth were a legitimate option after you had witnessed good Christian men torn apart by the ghouls.

These people were traumatized and any debate about proceeding was unwinnable. They were going through hell. The cannibals were only one part of that hell. They were also dealing with an atmosphere simply not capable of sustaining human life. Each breath was futile and accompanied by a feeling of being buried alive. No one could think straight; moments of unwanted daydreaming were arrested by spells of total panic. And another type of hell awaited them if they continued to ascend. Ominous sounds came from the cloud. Explosions and grumblings. It stunk of chimney soot and eggs. It was already causing the expedition trouble before they had even reached it, showering ash on them as they slept the night before. One ember, still glowing as it spiraled gently downward, had landed on the backpack of Coville, the man in charge of maps, setting their route home ablaze.

But Malick would not consider turning and running. He was going to the summit even if it meant going alone with no high camp full of colleagues waiting for him afterwards. He had come too far and given up too much – no, he had given up
everything
- to be here. His wife had threatened to leave him and take his son with her should Malick decide to go on this damned fool expedition. It took him all of one minute after her threat to leave on the trip anyway. A volcano in the Himalaya! How could he, a man of adventure and discovery, resist such an opportunity? He would never see his wife and son again.

“
I am letting my team go down,” Malick wrote the night before. “They are of no use to me or their country.” He waved to the men and wished them a safe descent. He then turned and began his journey to the top.

Three entries appear in his journal on July 16.

The first: “No air. Life not possble [sic] here. Wind is too powerful. Eruptions. No disernible [sic] top. Terrified.”

The second, in all capital letters, taking up the whole page, mostly etches in the paper devoid of ink: “Cannot find the tent.”

The final, hardly legible, tearing through the page: “Lost.

Chapter Six: The Sins of the Father

It was three in the morning when Hoyt received the telephone call from the Manhattan State Hospital. When he heard Tom Frances, president of the hospital, on the other end of the line, Hoyt was sure his mother had passed on. But she had not. Frances explained that Maddy was in a “heightened emotional state” and demanded to speak to her son. It would be best if Hoyt came right away.

Hoyt drove from his brownstone on Washington Square Park up to the hospital. As he drove, his mind probably wandered to thoughts of climbing. It often did, especially after he had been away from it for some time. Two years had passed since Everest, and life had been relatively quiet. He went to work every day of the week, spent dinner with Wizzy and the children, and went to bed at nine. This routine only varied for church on Sundays. Climbing had ceased altogether, except for an occasional Sunday hike near Bear Mountain.

He had stopped climbing for three reasons. First, his body had taken a beating on Everest. He had sent his back into constant spasms because of a tiny fall on his way down to the Southern Base Camp. His body had deviated in some subtle way from its predetermined limits, and the response was extreme. Endless trips to chiropractors (“All of them, ultimately, quacks” according to Hoyt.), stretching exercises on the floor of his bedroom and his office, employees walking on his back, but nothing worked for more than a few days. Then a routine visit to the dermatologist for hammer toe also revealed a patch of cancerous skin on his forehead. It was removed with success but not without some unpleasant procedures. Hoyt’s vision had also begun to go since the trip. He was not sure if the light in the Himalaya was any different than home, but he got headaches whenever he tried to read now, or he simply fell asleep. Old age arrives slowly and quietly for most men. In the case of Hoyt, it charged him like the Bull of Heaven did Gilgamesh.

In addition to the sub-standard condition of his body, there was the sub-standard condition of the world in 1941. Europe and Asia were already at war, and the United States was only five months away from Pearl Harbor. Fighting had closed off all four corners of the world to travel and most of the younger men who would have possibly accompanied Hoyt on an expedition were steeling themselves for looming combat.

But even more than the slow-motion collapse of his body, and even more than a world at war, there were Wizzy’s pleas that kept him home. He was fifty, and as his body brittled, each climb carried more risk. Another small slip on ice could ruin his back forever. Hoyt was in denial about that, but Wizzy was not. She wanted her husband around, even if their children were grown and off at college. She still loved him and wanted his company. He had to stop, or at least slow down. Otherwise, Wizzy would be at her wit’s end and capable of anything.

Deep down, Hoyt knew he could only stop climbing for a short while. Some day, even if it killed him and his marriage, he would return to the harsh world that liberated him from his father. It brought him the greatest joy he knew. And that urge to climb was hastened by a letter he received shortly after the Everest expedition. It came from a town in Nepal called Thame, from a man named Chhiri Tendi. Chhiri Tendi had been following the climbing career of Hoyt closely, and considered him somewhat of a hero. “I have guided many men to the tops of mountains, and all of them speak of you highly” Chhiri Tendi wrote. “They say you ‘have a gnat in your ass,’ but you rise to peaks faster than an eagle, and your decisions are wise in times of crisis. I read about your ascent of Mont Blanc when your rope broke and you saved yourself by chimneying up a fifty-foot crevasse. Definitely not the act of a sugarplum fairy, but of a real man. In addition to my great admiration for you, I simultaneously share your feeling that Aaron Junk is a prick.” These words must have made Hoyt cringe, not because of the bawdy language, but because he did not like to even think about Junk these days. But Chhiri Tendi continued, writing that he had once related to Junk because they had both lost a father early in life, both to depression brought about by trauma, but he found Junk’s stalking of Hoyt distasteful. “Not a good way to act” Chhiri Tendi wrote, “even if you did not have a father around to tell you right from wrong.”

The letter went on to explain that, oddly enough, Chhiri Tendi was climbing in the Himalaya at the same time Hoyt was making his bid for Everest. He wrote of a fascinating and terrifying experience on the mountain they called Fumu, which lay about fifty miles southeast of Everest. Hoyt knew of it and its difficulty, but not much more. Chhiri Tendi wrote he had almost made it to the top when his employer, a Mister Zachary Hoover had met a violent end. Chhiri Tendi himself had almost died as well.