Hell Is Above Us: The Epic Race to the Top of Fumu, the World's Tallest Mountain, Jonathan Bloom [best ebook reader TXT] 📗

our heroes with a horrible sight. Hoyt’s sonorous prayers combined with the new snow had apparently caused a widespread breaking up, and collapsing of, the ice fields. The Maw was now more of a valley with gentle slopes made of crumbled ice chunks and snow. What the Sherpa called “The Cat’s Eye” had dilated even more. The only part still holding fast was the six square feet upon which Hoyt and Yuudai stood. They now resided on a balcony hundreds of feet in the air, supported only by a tall, thick pillar of welded tuff. Their route was utterly obliterated. To carry on with the campaign, or even to retreat, they would have had to climb down an icy overhang followed by sheer, crumbly cliff. At the bottom, they would then have to climb up a sloping side to get out of the former Maw. Of course, climbing down the cliff would have been nearly impossible for climbers in perfect health. There was nowhere to go. They were trapped; trapped actors in a theater in the round, performing a tragedy to an audience of indifferent nothingness.

Down at Camp Two, the rest of the team looked up at the collapsed Maw. It was now more of a massive gulch with sides rising at approximately forty-five degree angles. Their route up to Camp Three, and Camp Three itself, were simply gone in the wreckage, buried by a slope of debris. At the top of the slope was a newly exposed spine of solid earth leading up toward the Eastern Ridge and summit. At the bottom of the slope were more nondescript chunks of ice, and then another slope rising up to what was the other side of the newly-expanded Maw. They had no idea whether the man who had brought them to Fumu was stuck under the debris somewhere. But again, as none of them had much love for the man – nor the Japanese fellow with him – no tears were shed.

Wilde would not be deterred pressing on. The collapse had certainly thrown a spanner into the works, but it did not preclude victory. He had an alternate plan almost immediately. Instead of retreating, they would attempt an even more aggressive route to the summit. Wilde reasoned that the trip to Camp Three the day previous had been much easier than expected. They had made the location of the planned Camp Three early in the day and had had enough time to climb down at a modest pace. And that had been in poor conditions.

“We are going straight for Camp Four, today” he wrote. “Yes indeed. The penultimate camp. Today!” It was to their benefit the collapsed Maw had exposed a solid rib of rock heading almost directly from where they stood to the mammoth spine that is the Eastern Ridge. The rocky route did not seem to contain any tricky steps. It would certainly be a farther jaunt than Camp Three, but the inviting nature of the new path assured the men they could go the distance before nightfall. Wilde yelled “Breakfast and then we can’t waste another moment!” Wilde and Ferguson gobbled down one of Ferguson’s signature breakfasts of yogurt and yams. Chatham, Drake, and the Sherpa ate the more traditional climbers’ breakfast and suited up for battle. The team donned their supplemental oxygen equipment for the first time, seeing as today’s assault would bring them higher on the mountain than ever before…and by a long stretch. The four Americans and Chhiri Tendi began to climb up the new route, leaving the remaining Sherpa and Camp Two behind. Five men left. They were to be the “happy few” who would take turns attempting the summit only days from now.

It was not Chhiri Tendi who talked up a storm on the route, nor Chatham, whose wounds had finally quieted him. It was now Drake’s turn. He talked Chhiri Tendi’s ear off. The inventor was refreshed from a night at lower camps and felt like passing the time in discussion, or monologue depending how one looks at it. “Why did I have to be tied by rope to this one? The talk was non-stop. He was jawing about something he called a ‘picture radio.’ He envisioned that some day, technology would bring us to a place where we could transmit pictures through the air just as we do with sounds today. A box made by a man cannot do such a thing, I said. Only gods can transmit visions to people through the air. When a Sahib starts talking like that, you suspect the altitude has rogered his earhole and damaged his brain. Boy, did I turn out to be wrong. I watch Gunsmoke all the time now, and I doubt any god is sending me that crap. But to be honest I was hardly listening to Drake that day.”

Chhiri Tendi was too busy thinking about searching for Hoyt and Yuudai. The other team members were not concerned about their annoying leader and their unwelcomed Japanese guest, but Chhiri Tendi felt like he was failing in his job if he did not look for them. His eyes kept darting to the remnants of the Maw, looking for signs of movement among the collapsed slabs. He detected nothing.

The brief break in the clouds ended. Again the world disappeared, consumed by snow. Any increase in speed they may have obtained from the terrain was cancelled out by the weather’s bad turn. The rocks beneath their feet became treacherous almost instantaneously as they were covered in a thin but growing layer of fresh snow. The only positive was the protection from avalanches provided by the ridge.

Soon the situation got worse. Wilde and Ferguson, the two who had dined on the yam feast that morning, began to fall ill. Both men would take turns dropping to their knees, doubled over with stomach cramps. Soon afterwards, the two had made a terrible mess of their trousers. Drake and Chhiri Tendi caught up with the