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

was not only the first up Fumu, but one of the first recorded ascents up any Himalayan peak. They were groundbreakers, and they were doing quite well at it. It was not until they started approaching the smoky summit things went haywire.

Some of Malick’s men claimed to hear other people lurking outside of their tents at night. Malick chalked it up to the effects of altitude on the brain. None of them were using breathing apparatuses, and no one yet knew the effects of such high altitude on a human being. “It only made sense that lack of oxygen might make a man quite daft” Malick wrote in his journal. But the altitude sickness theory failed to explain why two men were found one morning mutilated as if by animals. “Quimby’s right arm was gone up to the elbow. His lower jaw was also missing. Hirst’s stomach cavity had been emptied of all contents.” No one ever heard a scream.

The Sherpa pleaded with Malick to end the summit attempt and return to their homes. The mountain, they claimed, was haunted. Malick reasoned with them, explaining it was most likely some kind of wild animal living in the caves of the South Face. The Sherpa retorted that no animal could possibly live at this height and they wished to go home. Malick made a decision to send the entire expedition back down aside from himself. He would have a go at the top before turning around. Malick climbed off into the smoke and, according to the journal found in his backpack many years later, got lost almost immediately. He was never seen alive again. As disastrous an expedition as it was, Malick got farther up the mountain than any subsequent expedition until 1941, when Hoyt and Junk would make their own summit attempts.

Another notable attempt came in 1910, when a German team climbed Fumu from the north. The team was led by Josef Bruner, a field marshal in the German army who had an affinity for climbing mountains long before it was fashionable. Like anyone who hopes to enter Qila, they used the Qila Pass in the south, but then hiked along glaciers below the scree for four days until they were looking up at the Icy Bellows from the north. After losing two of his European team members to the scree, Bruner led the remaining team up the Eastern Ridge with the Icy Bellows to their right the whole time and the Oculus at the bottom waiting to swallow them should they fall.

Bruner was a peculiar fellow. He was “non-standard issue” as his colleagues in the military liked to say. When not in military uniform, Bruner was foppish. He would dress in the most fashionable tweeds and bowler hats of the day, and would carry around a black parasol made with the hide of an elk he had shot in the Alps. The parasol included a mahogany pole and solid gold handle. The dandy in Bruner did not disappear when tens of thousands of feet in the air scurrying up the side of a partially dead volcano in the Himalaya. After a long day of climbing, he would pitch his tent and then immediately don his best clothes and sip brandy. If the sun was out, no matter how cold, he sat in the snow with his parasol and did his brandy-sipping outside. This ritual was well known by German mountaineers and everyone found it quite charming. Bruner certainly enjoyed himself and simultaneously made a statement. “We are not animals,” he once noted to the newspaperTagliche Detroit & Familienblatter. “We may visit the sanctuary of animals, but we will keep our decorum no matter what the situation.” This policy was all well and good until Bruner, holding tightly to his parasol on the East Ridge of Fumu, was blown hundreds of feet away from the ridge by an icy blast from the Bellows. His parasol went flat, and he fell thousands of feet to his death. The remaining team, completely terrified, made the decision to turn around and end the expedition. The Germans would not return until Rauff’s expedition in 1937.

Of the eight recorded attempts to summit Fumu before 1941, all eight failed and all eight ended in multiple deaths. Most deaths on the North Face resulted from wind gusts blowing climbers off of the East and West Ridges, and most of the deaths on the South Face resulted from falls into crevasses and “cannibals.” Other than Malick, and later Hoover, no one had reached the higher elevations where lava became a consideration. Sixty years would pass after Malick’s original attempt before a human being would actually stand atop Fumu, cursing the mountain’s indifference between short, pained breaths.

Chapter Five: Mount Everest

Discouraged by Nanda Devi, but by no means beaten, Hoyt decided to up the stakes and make a try for Everest in September of 1939. People new to climbing in the Himalaya rarely start with Everest. But every decision Hoyt made at this point was informed by his age. Fifty was a tiger in the tall grass, lurking just out of sight. He needed to move quickly or risk never tasting the glory of the ultimate mountaineering experience.

Immediately after the stomach spasms had subsided from the previous outing, Hoyt organized the same team, received approval from the 14th Dalai Lama to enter Tibet, and secured passage on a ship to London. None of the men on Hoyt’s team risked losing their jobs leaving work on two consecutive journeys. They were all moneyed to the monocle, and could plan an infinite holiday if that was their heart’s want. The climbers sponsored their own trip this time. By the end of summer, Hoyt and his team found themselves at Everest’s northern Base Camp, looking up at the fabled face of Sagamartha.

No one had conquered Everest yet. Then thought to be the tallest mountain in the world, people had certainly tried. The British had