Hell Is Above Us: The Epic Race to the Top of Fumu, the World's Tallest Mountain (6 page)

Interlude: August 23
^rd
, 1937

The Nazis loved to climb. In the time leading up to World War II, Nazis and Nazi sympathizers flocked to the climbing clubs of Germany and Austria. Germany had enjoyed a rich tradition of mountaineering before and after the war. But during the 1930’s and 1940’s the ranks of these fine mountaineers were tainted with others who espoused fascist, racist rhetoric.

In 1933, the Nazis took power in Germany, smothering opposing leftist, socialist sentiments with brute force. At the time, Europe was between wars, but Hitler still had something to prove to the outside world. As the author Jonathan Neale points out in his book
Tigers of the Snow
, climbing was a perfect means by which the Nazi party could show the world the dominance of the Aryan race. They may not have beaten the British during World War I, but they could do one better and conquer Mother Nature herself. Clive Steinkraus, an SS soldier and avid climber, proposed another likely reason for the Nazi tendency to climb: “There are fewer Jews at high altitudes. They seem to be partial to city life and journeys of introspection. That is fine. It gives us a chance to escape to a place pure, white, and free from usury.”

Whatever the reason, either for pride or prejudice or both, the Nazi government funded several expeditions in the Alps and also the Himalaya. Neither the Germans nor the British had yet succeeded in topping any of the “eight thousanders” (mountains in the Himalayan chain higher than eight thousand meters). The Germans did have a glorious success in the Alps under their belts - Andreas Heckmair’s incredible 1938 ascent of the Eiger’s north face - but especially under Hitler, they felt they needed to reach the highest points on Earth before their British counterparts. During the time of Nazi rule, Germany made multiple attempts at Nanga Parbat, a mountain thought to be the 9
^th
tallest in the world, in 1934, 1937, 1938, and 1939. The 1939 expedition included Heinrich Harrer, the German climber who wrote the book
Seven Years in Tibet.
The attempts at Nanga Parbat all ended in failure and in the last case, the incarceration of the climbers by the British.

Nanga Parbat was a regular target for Germany because it was one of the few eight thousanders to which they had access. The French and British controlled most of Asia, so mountains like Everest and Kanchenjunga were out of their reach. Nanga Parbat is in the far western end of the Himalayan chain and was therefore easier for them to access.

Hitler was not satisfied with climbing the ninth tallest mountain in the world. He wanted Germany to conquer the biggest ones, even if they were deep in enemy territory. To this end, the Nazis planned covert expeditions into India, Nepal and Tibet. One such expedition was led by a man named Wolfgang Rauff, a powerful banker from Berlin. Rauff - raised in Ernstthal, Schönburgische Rezessherrschaften, Kingdom of Saxony - was an aggressive nationalist who had served in the First World War. Jealous of the younger men who were fighting on the front lines of the latest world war, Rauff carried a gun everywhere he went, even on climbing expeditions, in the hopes of running into the enemy.

A party of eight men led by Rauff made a push to climb Fumu in the summer of 1937. The expedition was bold for two reasons. Firstly, Fumu was already known to kill more climbers than it spared. Secondly, the mountain was well within the sealed Nepalese border, and Nepal itself was surrounded by realms of aggressive “sub-humans.” The party had to leverage the chaos of Stalin’s purges, the Moslem uprising in Sinkiang, and the Sino-British border disputes in Tibet to create a smokescreen for their protracted, tedious trek into Nepal. They made the trip of several thousand miles with minimal equipment using any means at their disposal including cars, boats, and the vegetable carts of local farmers.

At that time, no one had even come close to reaching the top of Fumu, let alone making it past ten thousand feet. The mountain has few possible approaches, and the approaches that do exist are deathtraps. Starting at eleven thousand feet and rising to twelve thousand feet, the mountain is almost completely ringed by ever-shifting scree. This precipitous steep of rubble endlessly changes shape due to activity from above, volcanic and otherwise. Rauff’s was the first recorded team to get above the scree without losing a single soul. They were certain once that obstacle had been surmounted, the remaining trip would be relatively easy.

Climbing any mountain over ten thousand feet requires a rigorous regimen of altitude acclimatization. Acclimatization is required so climbers can adapt to changing atmospheric conditions as gradually as possible. To this end, once past ten thousand feet, climbers will ascend roughly one thousand feet
and then climb back down
to sleep. They may repeat the process more than once before ascending further. As difficult as this process may sound, it is the better option when compared to altitude sickness. In its mildest form, sufferers may just experience a headache. But in its most severe form, a person can die a painful death. Despite this risk, Rauff and his team chose not to down-climb the scree. Altitude sickness seemed like a better fate than being crushed in a landslide. Rauff’s team would begin the acclimatization process above the scree.

They took what is known as the southern route, or “Malick’s route,” after the first known man to attempt Fumu back in 1881. Malick’s route was generally considered preferable to the northern route because of its proximity to the one pass into the Qila Sanctuary, even though the northern route was less challenging. If one chose to take the northern route, he would have to prepare for an extra several days hike around the base of the mountain. With an endeavor that already strained the limits of Man, few people in their right mind made that choice.

The next several days went well for Rauff’s party. From the scree, the eighteen small objects moved up the southern face of Fumu to their third camp, slowly but consistently. They down-climbed the next day with no incidents, and on the third day they climbed back up even faster than before. The outlook for the next few days was even more positive. They would be ascending and descending vast fields of snow and ice that gradually rose up to the intended Camps Four and Five. These fields were not very steep and as wide as football fields.

The weather was also in their favour. Other than the constant grim cloud at the summit, the blue of the sky was uninterrupted in all directions. The southern exposure and mild winds likely put the temperature somewhere around forty degrees Fahrenheit. Most of the men were shirtless.

According to Nima Sonam, one of the nine Sherpa who survived the events of that day, Rauff was walking in front, untethered. Rauff had felt on such an easy pitch, there was little need to be tied to the other men. Lobsang Tenjing, another Sherpa who was very interested in currying favor from any “white eyes” who hired him, walked in front with Rauff. He too walked without a rope. The two chatted away about politics, women, and the best places in Berlin to get a custom-made, high-quality backpack. Rauff fancied himself an expert on such topics. The other six Germans climbed in a straight line behind Rauff and Lobsang Tenjing, all tied off. They had given themselves about ten feet of rope between climbers, but climbed much closer to each other than that. The nine other Sherpa brought up the rear, also unfettered by the rope.

The warm weather put everyone in good spirits. Despite the thin air, the Germans began singing, most likely the infamous songs written for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Nima Sonam knew enough German to catch the gist of the lyrics. “They sang songs praising their leader, condemning outsiders, and glorifying the brotherhood among Aryan men,” he remembers. “It goes without saying they did not ask us to sing along.” The Sherpa could only assume they were not included in the “brotherhood.” Lobsang Tenjing was making every effort to defy the tradition and break through to their world. But everyone knew that when a climb was over, the old boundaries between “coolie” and “sahib” – regardless of the sahib’s origin – rose back up to a great height.

Below the singing, another sound began to rise, tuneless and terrible. The men stopped their revelry one by one as it reached their ears. A cracking sound. All eighteen souls stopped in their tracks and remained motionless. Whatever was cracking was enormous, the sound coming from directly below and also echoing from afar. And in another moment, it simply stopped.

The men looked at each other, shaken. Rauff laughed to break the tension. After some time, the other Germans laughed as well. The Sherpa did not. The whole team began to walk again. Rauff broke into the first line of
Das Lied der Deutschen
when the Earth opened up beneath them. The sound was deafening as ice chunks the size of city row houses separated from each other and fell. What had a moment ago been a featureless field of ice and snow now looked like an enormous cat’s eye - white on both sides with a long black slit up the middle, roughly fifty feet wide. The men on the rope were draped across the slit, with Rauff and Lobsang Tenjing holding onto the man at the front, and the nine Sherpa holding onto the man at the end. The ones in the middle flailed their arms and legs over the chasm and yelled for help.

Rauff was slipping and his backpack was ripping open. Oxygen tanks, cooker parts, cups, and the like fell out and rolled over the edge of the chasm. No one heard the sound of these things hitting the bottom. That may have been because of the screaming, or it may have been because the bottom was very far away.

Rauff yelled for everyone to keep quiet. Although straining to hold the rope, he needed a moment to think. Complete silence fell over the group, even those hanging in mid-air. The situation was problematic. The weight of the tethered men was being shared by the people standing on both sides of the chasm. Neither side could safely let go without placing all of the weight on the men on the other side. Also, if either side let go, the tethered man closest to them would fall and swing in a fifty foot arc – a fatal fall without question.

The man in the middle of the rope was an older climber named Dieter Hofstadter. Rauff called to him, telling him to take out a knife and cut through the hemp of the rope above him. In this way, the fall would be minimized for all of the hanging men, and the weight would be minimized for those holding the rope on land. But Dieter was helpless. He could not manage his knife with frozen, shaking hands.

They sat there for what must have seemed like an eternity, trying to consider a way out of this vexation. Rauff and Lobsang Tenjing would certainly have been growing exhausted quickly. In his stubbornness and desperation, Rauff demanded the Sherpa on the other side let go. He refused to be directly responsible for the deaths of any men on his expedition, and he was certain once the men on the rope were vertical, they could use their spikes and the pickaxes in their belt to take hold of the ice, thereby removing the burden of their weight from him and Lobsang Tenjing. The Sherpa on the other side were incredulous, as was the man the Sherpa were holding, a young typeface designer from Munich named Hermann Shultz – the person who would take the fifty-foot fall if Rauff had his way. Shultz yelled for Rauff to be a true leader and take the difficult step of letting go. Rauff refused angrily. Everyone was now yelling.

Having reached his limit, Rauff drew the pistol he kept tucked into his belt. He fired directly at the Sherpa on the other side. He was too focused on holding onto his climber and fired wildly, missing the Sherpa entirely. The Sherpa did not lose their grip on Shultz for even a moment.

Rauff’s desperate act could not have failed more miserably. The sound of the gunshot loosened whatever ground was beneath him. The cat’s eye dilated wider. Rauff and Lobsang Tenjing fell, pulling every last tethered man with them into the bowels of the mountain, screaming for their lives the whole way down. The remaining Sherpa looked down in shock at the massive opening below them. It was no crevasse. It was an entirely new feature in the topography of the mountain. The snowfield they had been walking on less than twenty minutes earlier had apparently been a frozen roof – one hundred feet thick - over a concave face between major buttresses. The roof may have been weakening and cracking for some time, but the warm weather and Nazi mirth had been enough to break it open. The southern route to the summit now had a major hurdle added to it. Ever since the Sherpa returned to tell of the disaster, western climbers have called the area “Rauff’s Maw.” But the Sherpa use another name for it. They call it “The Cat’s Eye.”

Chapter Three: The Stakes Keep Climbing

Madison Square Garden Bowl was abuzz on the evening of October 12th, 1936. “Gentleman” Dan Smith was taking on “Swarthy” Vin Piano in a boxing match for the heavyweight championship title. Smith had not lost a fight yet. Nor had Piano. Anyone who could get in to see the fight had done so. At ringside were notable names like Myrna Loy, Gary Cooper, and oddly enough, Carl Jung, who happened to be visiting the states at the time to give a series of lectures at Yale. Sitting next to Myrna Loy, and certainly more interested in Myrna Loy than the entertainment on the Garden’s marquis, was Aaron Junk. Almost a year had passed since the Presidentials, and Junk was not saying much. Perhaps he shared his thoughts about that disaster with McGee, but talking to McGee was as secretive as talking to himself.

Piano laid out Smith in one round. The crowd’s disappointment was palpable. People booed and threw their cigar stubs. Some of the bolder crowd members were heard to yell, “The fix is in!” directly at Piano. To his credit, Piano blew kisses to the crowd and exited the ring with his new belt.