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

two sickly men. Chatham was already standing over them, imploring them to turn around. They refused. “It will pass” Ferguson was heard to say between stomach spasms. Chhiri Tendi responded, “Yes, and it will keep passing. You are going to dehydrate.”

The wind and snow increased until they feared a blizzard. Exposed skin was destroyed. Vision was wiped out. Footsteps became small and rare acts of falling forward. Despite the chaos, they could still hear intermittent eruptions getting closer. At one point, shortly after a disturbingly close eruption, a red, glowing ball the size of a rhino flew into view only feet away and hit the slope, skidding along and leaving a sooty streak as it went. Where it came to rest, God only knew. Perhaps it would make it all the way to Camp Two before stopping. Shortly thereafter, a lava bomb struck Chatham square in the chest, the explosion burning a hole in his coat and further scorching his face. In response, he did what any reasonable man would do. He howled in pain, dropped flat on the ridge, and stuck his face into the loose, new snow. When he had caught his breath, he turned over. Again, the hideous gargoyle refused to turn back. All his lip remnants could generate was, “-uck all! I go uh!” The sentiment was clear. He was proceeding no matter what the cost.

The weather had almost brought them to a complete halt when Chatham yelled from the front of the line “We -eer!” Indeed they had made it. They were standing on the Eastern Ridge; the confluence of the northern and southern routes; the last turn before the summit. The storm prevented them from seeing anything of interest. Realization of their location only came from the fact they were no longer going up and that the earth dropped off in front of them, likely a straight shot down into the Icy Bellows and the Oculus at the bottom. To their left, unseen but certainly heard, was the summit, less than one thousand vertical feet away, booming and raging and throwing things. Drake wrote that night, “Half expcted [sic] to see an arrowed sign, broken ratling [sic] in the wind spelling in crooked letters ‘Here be dragons.’”

Wilde moaned. He sputtered to the others that they should go back down several yards and set up Camp Four there. The wind on the Eastern Ridge itself was too great. They had to find some protection even if it was minimal. The frigid wind was damaging them, causing widespread frostbite right through oxygen masks and clothing. That night, all four Americans wrote separately in their journals of discolored toes possibly beyond saving. Chhiri Tendi told me in our discussion “I knew the toes on my left foot would have to be removed when we returned to civilization. The thought was not so much scary as it was sad. I liked my toes. They were good friends. And I remembered my mother, rarely a warm person, playing with them as a child. I would miss them.”

They climbed down off the Eastern Ridge to set up their camp of two tents. There was no protection to be found anywhere. The wind whipping over the slope had no unique, discernible quality as compared to the wind at the top of the ridge. With no option left they chipped away at the ground, grinding up ice chunks and using them to build a berm. They slaved away, almost unconscious with exhaustion. The ancient ice did not give easily under their axes. Their arms ached above their numb fingers. Each strike against the ground sent pain traveling through their bodies. Wilde and Ferguson stopped work almost immediately because of the abdominal cramps wracking their beings. Chatham (an invalid himself), Drake, and Chhiri Tendi did the lion’s share of work. When the berm was approximately five feet tall, they stopped and set up the tents leeward.

Once inside, Chatham, covered in wounds and frostbite from the ascent, fell asleep immediately, oxygen tank and mask still on. Chhiri Tendi had to pull it off of Chatham’s burnt, frostbitten face. The depth of Chatham’s slumber must have been profound, as dragging cold rubber away from burnt skin only caused a low moan. After aiding his fellow climber, Chhiri Tendi got into his bag, but did not sleep. His air-deprived, exhausted mind could not stop pondering Hoyt and Yuudai’s fate. “What kind of Sherpa was I?” Chhiri Tendi asked. “Actually, what kind of man was I? There were two members of my team missing. Sure they may have climbed down, but knowing Hoyt’s stubbornness, they didn’t.” Sleep never came. Physical and mental anguish stayed with him.

Drake was also sharing a tent with them that night because constructing a third shelter in such raw weather seemed excessive and potentially deadly. What’s more, the added warmth of another body in the tight space could only help.

Meanwhile, life in the other tent was as grim as a hospital ward for the terminally ill. Wilde and Ferguson were taking turns soiling them selves and throwing up out of the tent door. Sleep would not come for them either. In its stead, Unconsciousness finally arrived and relieved them of their pain. Calls out to them from the other tent went unreturned. Drake ventured over to see if Wilde and Ferguson were even alive. They were alive, but completely unresponsive to the sound of their names and a firm shake to the shoulder. All they did was shiver. Drake gave up trying to revive them because the stench was overpowering, and he had resolved he could help the two sick men better once he had some sleep under his own belt. But as a last gesture before leaving – possibly the only kind gesture anyone on the team had ever shown, he changed the two men’s trousers for them, cleaned up their unmentionables, and disposed of the mess out in the raging storm. The two men remained in a vegetative state the whole