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

at the Algonquin, in the cheap seats at Fenway Park, in the offices of senators, and on the floors of shirt factories, the well-heeled and the baseborn alike prattled on about what would happen next. “Is one of them going to kill the other?” “I know William, and he has never been this out of sorts.” “Are the likes of those two maroons able to strike a bargain?” “I saw Aaron at last night’s performance of ‘The Mountebanks.’ He promised me Hoyt would pay for withholding the New Hampshire money.” No one could talk about anything else.

Cole Porter even wrote a song about the rivalry called “Snow-Blind Fury.” It was never published nor was it performed for the general public, but he banged it out on the piano at any little get together to which he happened to be invited. Given he was Cole Porter, he was invited to many. His friends learned it and their friends learned it, and it made the rounds at cocktail parties across the country. Although they never heard it firsthand, Hoyt and Junk both knew of it by word of mouth. They likely did not approve given the playful, mocking nature of the music and lyrics. An example:

“Climbing up big objects

shouldn’t cause this much ado,

Just ask the window wipers

high above Park Avenue.

The Southey with the mouth he’s

sparring with the pompous saint.

I swear a pair of mountain lions

would show much more restraint.

An Eskimo gal once told me

after a night of rubbing noses,

Those mountains hold no answers

unless your mama named you Moses.”

William Hoyt had no time to care about such things. He quietly split his time between his family, his church, his job, and climbing. Granted his mother was still very much alive and crazy and living at the state hospital. Visits to her were no stroll along the Coney Island boardwalk, but they were only once or twice a year as of late. Also, funding her was no problem. Hoyt had enough money to pay for ten crazy mothers.

He was getting older and he knew it. This drove him to climb harder and faster. He signed on for American expeditions to Mount McKinley, Petit Dru in the Alps, Aconcagua in the Andes, and even Mount Everest. Between 1936 and the 1939, Hoyt estimated he was part of nine expeditions. He was the expedition leader on many of them.

Nine expeditions in three years seem like an idyllic fate for William Hoyt. But things were far from good. He was literally being stalked by Aaron Junk. Of the nine Hoyt expeditions during the late 1930’s, Junk ran simultaneous expeditions at the same mountains on the last five of them.

The first stalking incident was harmless. Autumn of 1937, Hoyt and a small team climbed Mount McKinley in Alaska with little drama. The weather was favorable, the terrain forgiving, and the team worked together flawlessly. Everyone made it to the top unscathed. The down-climbing was also by the book. But as they started to descend, another party was coming up. The proper etiquette at such a moment is to stop and speak at least briefly to the like-minded people who have chosen such a similar path in life, both literally and figuratively. Despite his difficulties with interaction, Hoyt had every intention of striking up a conversation. But when the approaching team leader removed his goggles, Hoyt yelled back to his men “Carry on!” Hoyt began to walk again, as did his team. Hoyt didn’t say another word on the descent. “I can tell when William is angry,” recalled Douglas Astor, a regular member of Hoyt’s expeditions. “It is usually not in his words. His mouth is closed and he moves his lower jaw around as if he’s chewing on something tough, stringy, and unwilling to break. That day on McKinley was a perfect example.” Junk’s presence on the mountain was clearly no coincidence, and it enraged Hoyt. But he had every reason to believe this experience was a one-time thing. True, Junk had told the press he intended to climb every mountain Hoyt climbed, but not at the same time. If he had known this would continue, his anger would have been exponentially greater.

Hoyt would not actually see Junk again on the subsequent expeditions, but he would always find out sooner or later that “this new shadow I cast, darker than the absence of light” was nearby. On the next climb, Hoyt made it to the top of Mount Rainier solo. Not only did he make it solo, but he did so in record time following the route that was his namesake. Hoyt returned home to New York full of pride. He celebrated with Wizzy and his sons at Delmonico’s in Lower Manhattan, ordering the largest steak on the menu. At that dinner, he ran into H. Adams Carter, a world-class mountaineer in his own right. It was unlike Hoyt to brag about his climbing successes, let alone even talk about them. But he was giddy, and shared his good news with Carter. Being a gentleman, Carter congratulated him, but also let him know Aaron Junk was at Rainier at the same time as Hoyt. Although he had not set any record in terms of ascent, Junk had taken a route along the Russell Cliff in the north, and had done it solo. No one had ever climbed Rainier via the Russell Cliff before. Everyone considered it a path of too much resistance. Put simply, Junk had just established himself in the climbing community as a force to be reckoned with. His name was known before, but more as a curiosity for pestering Hoyt. Now he had shown himself to be worthy of praise in his own right while also stealing Hoyt’s thunder. Now Hoyt’s new Rainier record was not of much interest to anyone. If a god performs a miracle, people yawn. Junk on the other hand was a human, and he had just turned water into wine.

On three subsequent expeditions, Hoyt would