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

and the Europeans would blaze the trail, and then return for the rest of the Sherpa and equipment. The Icefall is not a landscape for the timid. It has the texture of parched earth if one were a small insect, with massive cracks in the ground running in every direction, some of them forty feet wide and one hundred feet deep. Ladders and ropes were set up to cross crevasses. Twist wrote, “When walking across a ladder over a one-hundred-foot-deep, forty-foot-wide crevasse, ‘Don’t look down’ takes on a life-or-death immediacy. Climbing up and down the Icefall over and over, one takes that saying and internalizes it so it is no longer consciously repeated to oneself. It becomes part of the inner workings of the Soul. But I have no fear. I look down into the crevasses, and I see smiling angels looking up, their arms out, waiting to catch me. Would they catch the Sherpa if one fell? They do not look like Church of England congregants, so it is unlikely. Perhaps the elephant-headed fellow is down there too, waiting for them, but I cannot see him.” Twist continued, “I think I am badly in need of oxygen.”

It was near the top of the Icefall where they ran into problems. No one could find John Browning. When they awoke in the morning, he was gone along with his camera equipment. He had not told anyone he would be off taking pictures, and it was essential for safety’s sake everyone was accounted for, always. He was also supposed to bring someone along. The team looked around for about an hour. The camp was located within a series of shallow crevasses forming a kind of maze, so everyone needed to be careful not to get lost.

When Browning was found, he was taking pictures of himself naked. Apparently, frotteurism was not his only “hobby.” Browning had misjudged the excursion to Everest, thinking it a time in the vast wilderness where he would have relative seclusion. He had clearly gambled he could get away for a short time to “commune with nature.” But the gamble had failed. Despite the expansive environment, climbing expeditions can be quite claustrophobic, especially back then, with men living on top of each other for months on end. His later explanation to the barristers was that he wanted to make artistic photographs of Man in Nature, in the spirit of the American Thomas Eakins’ paintings of bathers. One barrister wrote, “I do not recall any Thomas Eakins paintings that include a naked man on his back holding his legs in the air.” When the team down-climbed the Icefall as part of the acclimatization process, Browning was sent back to Base Camp with a few Sherpa. He would have to wait there until the expedition was over. Now the team was one man down.

The Sherpa were in an uproar. Browning’s actions were almost guaranteed to offend Chomolungma, goddess of Everest and the surrounding region. Their religion dictated piety on the mountain. There was to be no moral coarseness on an expedition. In the opinion of the Sherpa, what Browning did was the equivalent of slapping a goddess in the face. Now they only had to await her response.

“There is no air here, Wiz,” William Hoyt wrote. “We are not even past the North Col, and already I feel a great weight upon my chest. Each inhalation is like going through business school again. I cannot imagine how I will feel when we ascend another several thousand feet. I am also afraid. So many men greater than I have sat here before, writing to their loved ones, only to meet icy death hours later. There is no way to know what God will deliver from on high, but I promise you, I will not be lost.”

Hoyt, along with Taylor, Zeigler, and myriad Sherpa left from the North Col to Camp Four early on the morning of August 31st, wearing their breathing apparatuses. The addition of oxygen was bittersweet for the Americans. Now they could breathe easily but they also had to carry heavy tanks on their backs. For the Sherpa, the addition of oxygen was a pure victory. They had to carry fewer tanks and they could breathe easier, Sahibs be damned.

The team was plagued by bad weather almost immediately. Snow and wind bit at them each step of the way, not forceful enough to stop them entirely, but enough to slow them down. The men made it to Camp Four, exhausted and doubtful. When they awoke the next morning to take on more of the Northern Ridge, ten Sherpa said they were through. The weather and their own fatigue had gotten the best of them. Hoyt, in his usual manner, refused to let them leave. Instead of giving them a pep talk, he berated them for their “weakness.” This had the wrong effect. Twenty Sherpa began down-climbing. Taylor also complained of pain in his kidneys but Hoyt would have none of it. He yelled at Taylor, saying he must continue up the mountain until death stopped him.

The three Americans and the thirty remaining Sherpa made their way toward the top of the Northern Ridge and High Camp. At that point, they planned to turn onto the Northeast Ridge which led all the way to the top. That had been the route of the British ascents of the 1920’s. It was by the time of Hoyt a well-established route. But getting to the Northeast Ridge proved difficult. The storm continued to get worse. The wind and snow was coming from the north, leaving them absolutely no protection from its wrath. Hoyt felt his fingers and what was left of his toes go numb. More Sherpa turned back despite Hoyt’s attempts to bark at them through his mask and over the wind. Shortly thereafter, Taylor tapped on Hoyt’s shoulder. “I turned to look and Taylor waved goodbye,” wrote Hoyt. “I ripped off my mask and cursed at him. ‘You are nothing!’