Hell Is Above Us: The Epic Race to the Top of Fumu, the World's Tallest Mountain (32 page)

“
Craps.”

Their route was destroyed. The bergschrund was capacious, spanning the entire width of the glacier. Without that ice bridge, they would have to trek a half mile to the west in order to get to the other side. Climbing back down was not a better option; they were only five hundred vertical feet from Camp One and forty-five hundred from Base Camp. So they would press on, around the schrund and then up.

Morrow had gone quite barmy. He babbled, producing words that did not go together at all. “Take me to the warm crevasse! It’s time to be the troglodyte we all were! But no hieroglyphs or she’ll bleed.” He went on with these half-cackled ramblings while River Leaf and Zeigler helped him up. “The man was still shaking and looking around confused,” Zeigler wrote in his journal that night. “I couldn’t understand most of what he said because he was mumbling and chuckling madly. I would pick up the occasional word. ‘Forget’ came up a lot, as did ‘warm.’ But the rest sure seemed like gibberish to me.” Junk walked up and slapped Morrow. He told him he was sorry for the terrible experience he just went through. Junk said he even felt a little responsible because Morrow would not have been in that spot had not Junk invited him on the expedition and suggested the craps game. But damn it, Morrow would have to pull himself together. They could not walk him around the schrund and then up to Camp One. He would have to walk himself. When River Leaf and Zeigler let go of his arms, Morrow stayed upright, albeit still shaking and going on at the mouth. The team could proceed.

The thought of resuming must have been devastating for everyone given they had just lost a colleague. None could see the body of Fenimore. Some of the Sherpa hiked over to parts of the crevasse edge that were sharp enough to offer a view straight down, but still they could not see their fallen friend. There was no light down there, and the scarce light that did make it down suggested the whole schrund curved as it descended. The bottom was likely somewhere right under them. There would be no retrieval of the body. As usually happens on the ascent of a mountain, the body would remain where it had fallen.

They hiked west around the crevasse. The east had been a shorter route, but also uneven and blocked by seracs. The west was practically a snow field, albeit a long one. They hiked single file, at least ten yards down from the crevasse that had taken Fenimore. The team’s greatest mind – the one who was uncanny with routes and maps – had given way to some kind of insanity. Whether it was temporary or permanent, no one knew. Morrow himself would have been the most qualified to figure that out. The best they could do was help him along and hope he would recover with food and rest. River Leaf guided him. He still talked under his breath, but he did say some occasionally lucid if rather odd things. One specifically had to do with a need for “the medicinal qualities of warmth.” He pleaded with the River Leaf to steer him towards warmth. She reassured him a warm tent would comfort him for a short while at Camp One. He became frustrated and belligerent. “That will not suffice for my needs!” No one bothered trying to understand him. He would just have to move with the team, and perhaps remain at Base Camp when they descended at the end of the day.

They reached Camp One at noon with the intention of staying for only an hour and then climbing down. Morrow made a bee line for his tent. He closed the flap and continued to mumble away. The rest of the team ate a small lunch, drank tea, and smoked. The ritual of smoking, so common on climbing expeditions, was especially precious for the team that afternoon. All of them were wrestling with the second death of the climb. The odds of survival on this journey were not good, and the rate of expiration so far only served to reinforce that truth.

After their needs were sated, the team broke apart and focused on individual strategies for calming nerves. Cole nursed his frostbitten cheek and read books on physics. Although he did keep a journal, most of his writings were meditations on particle physics. Small particles revolving around larger ones, trying to make connections. It did not matter that his brain was getting softer with each increase in elevation. The mere attempt to understand the words brought him comfort. McGee and Zeigler played guts poker for no money. The four surly Sherpa retired to their tents, not to be seen until it was time to go back down. The remaining Sherpa checked the camp for damages that may have occurred the night before..

Pasang Dolma and Junk soothed themselves in a manner common to those of exceptional character: They planned. They had hoped Fenimore and Cole would comprise a second team to the summit should their own attempt fail. The third team was to be comprised of Morrow and Zeigler. Fenimore was gone and Morrow was also gone albeit in a less literal sense. Morrow might return from his derangement, but there was no guarantee. McGee could not handle the final push. Pasang Dolma suggested River Leaf could make a go for the top. Junk chafed at this suggestion, becoming almost outraged. Junk would not say as much, but his respect for River Leaf was becoming greater by the day. It was beginning to border on fawning. He would bring her tea and help her put on her backpack. He asked for her opinion about the weather and the route ahead. Her responses were often shrugs. But when she did answer, she was almost always right. “If I am not mistaken” Cole wrote in his journal, “our fearless leader has become smitten with the Indian squaw!” Clearly, Junk was not going to risk River Leaf any more than he had to. They would have to consolidate down to two teams for the final attack, with Pasang Dolma and Junk comprising the first team, and Cole and Zeigler comprising the second.

Pasang Dolma and Junk also reviewed several details of Hoover’s climb from two years earlier. After one more day of acclimating on the Rakhiot Glacier, they would take a hard left at some hot pools of sulfurous water that bubbled only one hundred feet above their current location, and begin looping around the Icy Bellows, following its eastern lip. Hoover’s notes suggested the lip was not perfectly smooth. It had several steps, some of them twenty feet high and technically challenging. Hoover had lost three men on the lip, one to a loose cornice, one to the wind, and another who froze to death. That being said, the eastern lip was tea and crumpets compared to the western lip, so they would endure without complaint.

The eastern lip would then give way to the Eastern Ridge, the final path to the summit. They had seen no sign of the fastidious demon Hoyt since arriving at the Qila Sanctuary. If he was there, then he had taken the southern route. When Junk and his team reached the Eastern Ridge, provided the weather was clear, that would be the time when their rival’s fate would become clear. They would know whether Hoyt was ahead of them or behind them. It would be at the ridge that the south would become visible and Junk would see enemy camps adorned with prayer flags.

“
Of course! The hot pools!”

The voice was Morrow’s. It burst forth from inside his tent.

He rushed out, hopping on one foot at a time as he pulled on his boots in a mad rush. He grabbed River Leaf’s arm, causing her to drop the pipe she was smoking, and told her to come with him. She broke free, clearly displeased with Morrow’s use of physical force. The old, reasonable Morrow came through. Calmly, he said to her, “Please.”

She walked with him. Junk reminded the two that they had to leave to go down the mountain in only a few minutes. Morrow waved Junk off, as if to say “Fine, fine. But leave us be for a moment.” Cole asserted himself into the small party, despite Morrow’s complaints. Cole had heard talk of hot pools, and wanted to go so he could heat his frostbitten face.

Morrow walked Cole and River Leaf up the mountain, away from Camp One. They were ascending to the edge of the Icy Bellows. Without their usual equipment, they moved rapidly. Ahead of them, snow blew every which way, fueled by the wind torrent of the Bellows.

The three struggled against thin oxygen, but that handicap did not stop Morrow from talking without end. Cole, an indefatigable documentarian, recorded Morrow’s academic-but-unhinged discourse later that day:

“
In an ideal world, the memory of a trauma would be forgotten soon after the offending event. But of course, a trauma is defined by its being unforgettable. If the traumatic memory remains in consciousness, to be mulled over eternally, the subject will go insane. No, the best one can hope for with trauma is containment, and in the Science of the Mind, the term for containment is ‘repression.’

“
What is repression? Good question, River Leaf [she had not asked]. Herr Freud described everything in terms of the most advanced technology of his time, which happened to be hydraulics. He saw the psychological life of the human as a cadre of different forces asserting pressure on one another; the Superego on the Ego, the Id on the Ego, the Conscious on the Unconscious, etcetera. Repression is merely the Ego actively keeping certain fears and unacceptable desires in the Unconscious. Certainly, repression brings about side effects such as neurotic behaviors, but such side effects are certainly better than facing the horror of reality, despite what the psychoanalytic community claims.”

Being an academic himself, Cole was able to follow up to a point, although his background was in the hard sciences and so some of Morrow’s words seemed alien and silly to him. Morrow continued:

“
The problem is, how does one intentionally repress a memory? That is the question I have been addressing for the past decade. My solution? I call it ‘repression through regression!’ The subject simply simulates life in the womb for several minutes and when he emerges, he is right again. The irony and the difficulty of this approach is that memory of the womb has itself been repressed by the trauma following shortly thereafter: Birth. None of us remembers birth because it was a trauma we could not stand to carry around with us. Sadly, memory of the womb went with it. So, in the process of simulating the womb, we are revisiting that most wonderful of lost memories and in so doing we displace, or more appropriately, repress, the new trauma.

“
I am the subject today. I was scarred to the core by watching Fenimore die and then almost dying myself. If I do not treat the mental scar soon, it will become infected. How will I simulate the womb? Well, I will use the gift provided to me by the mountain.”

Morrow stopped at the lip of the Icy Bellows as its terrible wind hit him like one thousand fists. He shielded himself as best he could, but he had to lean almost completely forward, as if lying on a bed of air, so as not to be blown back down the incline he had just ascended. River Leaf and Cole had to do the same. In front of them, through squinted eyes, they saw the Icy Bellows for the first time. It was an enormous bowl, a wasteland. It was so enormous a large town could fit in it, a town with no laws other than those enforced by the cruel, unfeeling constables Cold and Despair. And beyond the Icy Bellows they saw – and heard - the summit. Or at least they saw the grey cloud covering the summit.

“
Stop straining to look into the distance” Morrow yelled over the din. “Look at your feet!” There stood the hot springs Junk had mentioned earlier. Cole counted six of them, each a different size and shape. Steam rose from them and then scattered chaotically, caught up in the Bellows’ unruly wind currents. Scientists today believe the volcanic activity under Fumu’s cone must escape through vents other than those near the summit. Some of those vents lead to aquifers before reaching the surface. The result is steaming holes full of hot water, cooled somewhat by exposure to the frigid air.

“
The womb” Morrow exclaimed. He did not waste any more time. Within moments, he had stripped down to nothing despite the frigid air and risk of instant frostbite. A reasonable man might have tested the water with a toe or at least walked in slowly. Morrow dove in. Moments later his head surfaced. A smile spanned his face. “It is lovely! Come in and experience the Majesty of your origins!” River Leaf pleaded with Morrow to get out. They were cold and Junk was waiting for them. They needed to climb back down to the team and start the final descent to Base Camp. Morrow was unreachable in his joy.

“
I am being renewed!” he said through tears of joy. “Each muscle is like dough. Each nerve tingles with pleasure. My needs completely fulfilled by the warmth around me. There are no past pains because there is no past. This is the beginning.”

Cole spoke up. If Morrow did not get out immediately, he and River Leaf were going to abandon him. River Leaf gathered Morrow’s clothing and held it in a bundle, awaiting his return to Reason and emergence from the pool.

Eyes closed, Morrow remained motionless, head bobbing above steaming bubbles, smile etched permanently onto his face. With the speed of a minute hand, he turned his head to them and opened his eyes. “You see,” he said with an air of complete understanding and confidence. “Doctor Freud was right. It all boils down to hydraulics.”

One moment later, with a thunderous roar, one of the other pools burst heavenwards in a geyser eighty feet high. Then another. Morrow’s smile faded. His eyes were wide. Another geyser. He looked around for a foothold or handhold. Another geyser. River Leaf dropped the clothing and came forward as the bubbles in Morrow’s pool became more chaotic. Another geyser. Morrow cried and flapped his hands helplessly. Cole had had the good sense to bring a rope even though they had brought no other climbing equipment. He threw one end to Morrow who quickly tied it around his waist so the rope protruded out from his belly button.

It was too late. “The sound was deafening” Cole wrote.

“
The mountain ejected Morrow. He shot into the air along with millions of gallons of water. The other end of the rope pulled free from me. Had I not been wearing gloves, it would have damaged my hands beyond repair. Morrow’s scream rose into the air, changing pitch due to the Doppler Effect. With that, the geyser ended as quickly as it had begun. The wind of the Bellows carried Morrow and the spray at least twenty feet leeward. He came down with a sickening thud and slid, lifeless, down the glacier along with a cataract of hot water and the sulfurous stench of the Earth’s innards.”