Hell Is Above Us: The Epic Race to the Top of Fumu, the World's Tallest Mountain (35 page)

Then the laughter was interrupted by a noise coming from higher up the mountain. This was a new sound. It was not an eruption at the top of the mountain. Nor was it another boulder bouncing its way toward them. It was indeed coming toward them, and it was massive, but the sound lacked the intermittent banging of a rolling rock. This sound had a loud, consistent, grumbling quality to it. Fumu, unstable and nastier than these men, was clearly ready to pull another one its tricks. Ravens in the sky above them scattered in response to the coming thing.

Out of the blizzard, a giant slab of the ice and snow from higher up the mountain – easily the size and shape of Big Ben moving roof-first - came sliding toward them, digging deep into the scree as it went. It was nothing short of a glacier moving at high speed. Had it not been caked with debris picked up from the scree, they would have never seen it coming until it was right on top of them. They ran laterally to avoid its path, some men going left, others going right. The monstrosity barreled by them, improbably high and long, all the while kicking up stones and emitting a deafening din.

And then it was gone. Hoyt and his team were fortunate because the slab reached the bottom of the scree without hitting Base Camp (nor did it hit Junk’s camp for that matter). It also did not hit any climbers despite its girth and speed. But now some of the team stood on one side of a freshly cut deformation – a valley running down the fall line of the mountain, and the others stood across the valley from them. Neither group could see the fellows across from them because of the snow. Yells could not be heard properly. “Follow the cut upward!” Hoyt yelled, hoping to be heard.

Hoyt looked down the line of men on his side of the valley when he heard moans. Apparently, there was another unfortunate effect of the landslide: Thornton, the young linguist, deft climber, and exceptional documenter of the expedition, was temporarily blinded. Rocks kicked up by the passing ice had hit him in the face. The man had now covered his eyes with one arm and was swinging the other arm in front of him making sure not to bump into anything. Hoyt then realized Thornton was walking dangerously close to the fresh valley as he moved up the scree toward him. He responded to the crisis with his failsafe emotion: anger. This response was likely reasonable in his mind because he was potentially going to lose his first climber and he needed every able-bodied man in order to defeat this hill. He yelled as quickly as he could ‘Damn it, Thornton, stay to the right!’ “

These words caused Thornton to immediately turn toward, and fall into the freshly-cut valley. He rolled head over heels into the whiteness until he could not be seen at the bottom.

In his tent at the top of the scree that evening, Hoyt wrote:

Dearest Journal,

The day’s events have taught me a cutting lesson about my nature. I care about myself more than anything else in my purview with the exception of God almighty. These people around me, from Drake to Chatham to the jap, all of them are but spheres orbiting the star that is me. When a meteor (in the form of, say, a stuck yak or a rolling boulder) sets them off the course I have dictated by gravity, I am enraged because they are not serving me as they should. What an unpleasant thing to be…an angry sun.

The cost of my self-centeredness came to a head today on the mountain. Thornton wandered blindly, moaning in pain from stinging dirt in his eyes. I yelled at him – quite angrily mind you - to stay to the right so he would not fall into the valley. We needed every climber we had. His hurt eyes may have been something we could remedy, but broken bones or death from a fall would make him unsalvageable as a climber. I told him to stay “to the right.”

And there is the problem. My right was his left. I was aiming down the mountain and he was aiming up it. I did not have the capacity to take his perspective, to see the world from another point of view, to remove myself even momentarily from what the German intellectuals would call my own ‘umwelt.’ And now Thornton has a shattered pelvis and a broken arm and is being carried down the mountain by the four Sherpa we had on our side of the ice slide.

The team had several problems since the ice slab incident. Thornton was out. The weather remained unforgiving. And the team had been divided, with one group having both radios. After Thornton and the Sherpa had left for Base Camp, the team on Hoyt’s side of the valley consisted of Hoyt himself, Yuudai, and Chhiri Tendi. They would have to fend for themselves with two tents, ample climbing equipment, but only a few days’ worth of food.

Hoyt had tried to make radio contact with the others immediately after the Sherpa had left with Thornton. He told the person on the other end his location and the planned location for setting up Camp One that night. Chhiri Tendi had walked up behind Hoyt holding the other radio at that moment. Close proximity did not require the antenna to be extended. Chhiri Tendi looked at Hoyt and then said into the mouthpiece, between deep breaths “What are you wearing?” Filled with rage over this little shenanigan, Hoyt held back from hitting the inappropriately comical Sherpa. “I abstained from blowing up. The mishap with Thornton was teaching me I had to change my ways somehow.” Chhiri Tendi’s opinion was that he probably deserved to be hit. “I tend to use humor to calm my nerves when I am concerned, even when it is probably not appreciated by others. Then again, I tend to use humor for everything.”

Hoyt, Chhiri Tendi, and Yuudai hiked up the scree, avoiding falling rocks as best they could. The weather continued to assault them. We can only assume the climb had now become harder psychologically because of all of the uncertainties that had been added to the equation. What if they did not find the other group? They would be stuck at the top of the scree with limited food until the weather abated. And once it did, if they could not see the other members of their expedition somewhere along the top of the scree, then they would need to give up on the climb and retreat to Base Camp or else risk succumbing to fatigue from hunger. “What’s more, I am stuck with two members of the team who I dislike intensely. Even Chatham with his now ghoulish visage and interminable chatter would be better than this harlequin porter and the silent, malicious oriental. Regarding the latter, I am convinced he is going to cut my throat tonight because the rest of the Americans are gone. This is his chance to kill the leader of the enemy. He can do it in the night and then hide my body, lying to Chhiri Tendi about seeing me wander off into the darkness, mad with a mix of altitude and despair brought on by my team’s fate and my brother’s death. He can continue the lie when he sees my fellow expedition members again. And then when he returns to Japan, he can finally expose the truth and be welcomed as a hero.” Hoyt’s prediction turned out to be incorrect as they all slept through the night, their exhaustion a warm, feather bed.

By five in the morning when they awoke, the weather had not changed. The wind howled outside of their tents and snow piled up. Waiting it out seemed to be the only choice and so that is what they did. “I am trapped here while Junk advances” Hoyt wrote. “Frustration builds in me by the second. He is no more than a grown urchin, unsuited for the glory of the mountains. The only positive aspect of my current predicament is that by slowing down our ascent, we counter the effects of altitude we had risked by delaying acclimatization. Other than that, I am in my own personal Hell.”

Yuudai and Hoyt did not say anything to each other the entire time they were holed up above the scree. They remained in their own tents. Ever the vigilant Sherpa, Chhiri Tendi communicated with both of the other climbers, inquiring as to their physical and emotional health. “I knew my job” Chhiri Tendi said in my interview with him. “And it was not just to carry the customer’s equipment. It was also to give advice. And I could give the best advice if I knew everything, from the team’s physical ailments to the dreams they were having at night. If anything seemed even slightly off, I would recommend we get the fuck off the mountain.”

There was nothing to do but sit in the tents and pass the time. The men read books, smoked, wrote, drank coffee, ate canned meats and chocolate, and shivered. When the next night came, sleep did not come as easily. After all, they did not have a day of climbing under their belts. They tossed and turned and shivered through an evening of deafening wind and knowledge they were low on food. They could risk at most two more days before they would have to accept defeat and climb down.

Out of what was likely boredom, Chhiri Tendi made an unusually risky decision. Having more experience with these types of unpleasant situations, he felt better than Hoyt or Yuudai. He decided to venture out into the storm and look for the other members of the expedition. He would bring one of the radios with him. If he could find them, then they could all reunite and form a single Camp One. This would buy them all more time to wait out the storm and possibly continue the climb. Give me one day, he asked.

Chhiri Tendi struck out eastward along the top of the scree at approximately noon on September third, with the weather now even worse than it had been during the climb up. Hoyt and Yuudai remained in their individual tents, waiting for Chhiri Tendi to either return or radio them with news. Neither came. Night fell and they did not see or hear from the sardar.

Now Hoyt was convinced Chhiri Tendi was dead. In his frustration, and possibly due to the effects of altitude on logic, he also became convinced Yuudai had set into play all of the events that had transpired so far on the mountain. “The man could not have planned this better. We are alone now. Even Chhiri Tendi is gone. Now he is certainly going to drop the blade.” Sleep did not arrive at all for Hoyt on that third night above the scree. He tossed and fretted. Yuudai was going to murder him. And even if he was spared by some whim of God, the world he would live to see was an embarrassment. He had not even made it to Camp One and already the team was in disarray and the expedition in serious jeopardy. Did Hoyt really want to live through this? Did he want to experience a world in which Junk stood triumphant, soaking up the spotlight of history, while he wiped egg off his face in the shadows?

Yuudai entered Hoyt’s tent at five in the morning. A delirious Hoyt jumped out of his sleeping bag, fully clothed to shield from the cold. He pulled off his scarf to expose his neck. “Take me!” he yelled at Yuudai. “It is over! Better death than defeat!” Yuudai looked on quizzically. When no death arrived, Hoyt composed himself and put his scarf back on. He asked Yuudai what he wanted. In broken English, Yuudai spoke. “No Chhiri Tendi. What to do, Mr. Hoyt?”

What to do indeed. He had dilly-dallied long enough. It had not been a complete day since Chhiri Tendi had left, but it had been long enough given the storm. The decision Hoyt had to make at this point was no decision at all. Mountain climbing at its core involves a certain amount of recklessness in the sense you are doing something quite dangerous and
you do not need to be doing it
. But good mountain climbing requires Eros to counter Thanatos – a Rational Self to counter the Death Drive. This sensibility is usually innate. It is difficult to forge on the mountain; After all, if a climber does not know when to walk away from a climb, he does not live to
become
the reasonable climber. Hoyt was born with a sensibility that held fast in high pressure situations. This anchored his otherwise dangerous love of climbing in a bed of relative safety.

But apparently, all of that is rubbish, because Hoyt decided to continue the ascent. The snow was still coming down at an unholy clip and the wind had not let up. The Junk competition meant too damned much to Hoyt, and he was convinced if they simply struck out east as Chhiri Tendi had done, they would cross some evidence of the rest of the team. When the slab of ice had divided them, the others had been off to the east of the cut, so it made sense now above the origins of the ice, the other team’s camp was likely only a hundred yards away or so.

Of course, if it was that easy, then what had happened to Chhiri Tendi?

Roughly ten minutes after leaving Hoyt and Yuudai, Chhiri Tendi had come across a wide trail of relatively fresh tracks in the snow. He checked his compass. The tracks were heading due west which was far astray from their planned route. Chhiri Tendi followed them for what seemed like an eternity. Darkness began to fall and his digits became like ice. His nose felt as if it was made of marble. Darkness fell completely and he continued to struggle through the snow and wind. “I was convinced I had stumbled across the footprints of spirits whose job it was to lead me to the afterlife; because there was no way they were tracks of our team. They were too off course.”

But it was in fact their tracks after all. Chhiri Tendi came across the tents of the rest of the team at approximately 8pm on the evening of the third, frostbitten hand and frightened by his slog through certain death. Drake and Wilde welcomed him into their tent to get warm.

Drinking tea, wrapped in a blanket, Chhiri Tendi said nothing for a few minutes. Then he recalls inquiring about their circumstances.

The team openly admitted they were going to try for the summit regardless of Hoyt’s presence. In a rare display of profanity, Wilde summed up their reasoning thusly: “Hoyt is an asshole. We all know this to be true. Why wait for him or search for him? He can climb down if he’s lost. Any responsible man in reasonable health would do that. And we’ve busted our humps to get here. We are not going to turn around now!”

Chhiri Tendi was not supportive of this stance, so he changed the subject. “You are off course. Did you know that?”