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

I yelled. ‘I should have invited my mother to come. She would have made it.’ Taylor held up the back of his mitten to me. I can only assume he was giving me the finger. He then walked down the ridge into the storm.”

After many days of negotiating the Khumbu Icefall, Junk’s team made it to the Western Cwm, a relatively gentle climb leading to Camp Two. Despite its lack of technical challenge, the Western Cwm presents its own unique obstacles. One major obstacle is the heat. It catches copious amounts of sunlight during the day, so climbers spend much of their time boiling and dressed down. But Junk’s team was not so lucky. The storm that was simultaneously abusing Hoyt’s team on the north side of the mountain was also wreaking havoc on the southern approach. They had planned to set up Camp Two at the bottom of the Lhotse Face, but the entire team was exhausted. They set up their tents half way up the Western Cwm, nuzzled up against the rocky face that rose to the Western Ridge. The rocks protected them from the full force of the wind, and so there they stayed for two endless, dull days.

When they woke up on the next day, the air was cold and windy, but the sky was a brilliant blue. Junk was ready to go, but Twist hesitated. “I told him the Lhotse Face was a major risk. It had taken the brunt of the storm, and I was concerned an attempt on it today guaranteed an avalanche.”

As its name implies, the Lhotse Face is a rise on another mountain called Lhotse. Lhotse is about two thousand feet shorter than Everest and attached to Everest at her hip. The classic southern Everest route – the one which Junk had planned to take - makes a very steep, straight shot toward the Lhotse summit before turning left and ascending toward the ridge attaching the two mountains. It is along this ridge one reaches the South Col and the Southern Ridge leading to Everest’s summit. Junk agreed with Twist the Lhotse Face looked threatening, covered with a fresh layer of soft snow begging to drop. But now they had to come up with an alternate route. Twist suggested the Western Ridge, up a steep incline off to their left.

Oldhusband implored Twist to forget the idea. From where they stood, the Western Ridge looked serrated like a knife. Oldhusband wrote, “Training the eyes left to right, one saw step after step after step. Sure, the face leading to the Western Ridge did not have the precarious snow of the Lhotse Face, but at least the route from the South Col to the summit was easily visible and looked relatively safe (with the exception of one nasty looking step). What perils awaited us on the Western Ridge? Twist was thinking in a shortsighted manner to say the least.”

The gambler in Junk had awakened. Both options were perilous, but the Lhotse Face was a known quantity, which is always the safer bet. If they were quiet about it, they could ascend the face and be out of harm’s way quickly. But the Western Ridge. There was no way to be sure what it held up its sleeve. From their point of view, they could only see the bumpy ridgeline but little of where it led. Nonetheless, Junk leaned heavily toward the latter option. The risk of avalanche was practically guaranteed with the Lhotse Face, but for all they knew, the Western Ridge was a red carpet to the top of Everest. For a moment, Junk was back on the streets of South Boston and, as usual, he was going for the long shot.

Oldhusband made one last effort to convince the other men to take the Lhotse Face. In desperation, he proposed the team intentionally set off an avalanche. By making a lot of noise they would hopefully trigger an avalanche on the Lhotse Face. Junk was willing to give it one chance.

They started by yelling a lot. All twenty-eight Sherpa were asked to participate. But the groups’ exhausted lungs were not very effective at this altitude. The resulting chorus of “yells” sounded like someone snoring into a trombone. Twist spotted a boulder about twenty feet up the rock face below the Western Ridge that looked as if it could easily be pushed down to the rocky surface below. Perhaps the sound of rock meeting rock would do the trick? He, McSorley, and several Sherpa slowly climbed up to it and began to push. It would not budge. Winded and not wanting to down-climb, McSorley asked for another Sherpa to hike up with a bag of tent poles. They would stick one end of the tent poles under the boulder, set the middle of the poles’ length on top of a smaller rock, and place all of their weight on the other end. Put more plainly, they were going to fashion a see-saw. To make a larger enough space for the men to rest their weight, Oldhusband placed his backpack atop their end of the poles. The men piled on. To their amazement, it worked. The boulder slowly leaned away from them and then quickly dropped over the lip it had long called home.

The boulder made a loud echoing crack as it hit limestone twenty feet down. It then broke into two massive halves, both rolling in different directions. Unfortunately, one of the halves advanced toward the group waiting at the camp, a giant coin rolling on its thin side, beginning to wobble as it lost speed. The boulder finally came to rest on Huggins’ left foot.

The resulting cry echoed up and down the Western Cwm. It was high-pitched; more of a scream than a yell. And it persisted. Huggins kept screaming and screaming, spit flying from his mouth. The yell stopped only occasionally so he could produce curse words and pleas for someone to remove the boulder from his hobbled foot. It