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

It was an airplane. Some sort of single-man fighter. The left wing was clearly damaged. The men had little time to run, nor did they have many places to run, nor did they have the energy to move quickly. The plane passed above the Hillary Step, and within moments, it made contact with the Western Ridge. As if planned by some cruel, unknowable force, the plane met the ridge at an angle practically parallel to the ridge, like a train gradually meeting up with a new track. It then proceeded to tumble like an acrobat down the ridge, not leaving it at all. Junk, who was the first in its path, had moved off the ridge just enough to avoid contact, and to avoid falling to his death, but he was close enough to receive a piece of flying shrapnel to the chest.

Oldhusband rose from his knees and tried to jump off the north side of the ridge, but his rope-mate McSorley tried jumping in the opposite direction, with Twist pulled down right in the middle. Oldhusband and McSorley were pulled right back on top of Twist. All three men were hit by the plane and killed instantaneously.

Ang Kikuli watched as the plane, coming right for him, hit an upturn in the ridge (between where he and Oldhusband had had their awkward moment) and sail up into the air directly over him. It came to land on their camp, full of supplies including oxygen tanks. When it made contact with the tents, it exploded. Ang Kikuli, and even Junk further up the ridge, could feel the heat. The sound deafened Ang Kikuli for days. He later wrote, “I saw but could not hear the Lhotse Face collapse in a massive avalanche. It was a cruel taunt.”

Junk lay on his back, looking up at black brush strokes of smoke on a deep blue sky canvas. He must have felt unbearable pain in his chest. He would later find out the shrapnel had punctured his right lung, so breathing difficulties brought on by high altitude were now doubled.

He must have wondered how his long shot had gone so wrong. Years later, while discussing the risk involved in a business investment with the press, Junk said, “I am confident, but cautiously so. I am older now, and I’ve learned you can calculate the angles to death, measuring the marigolds until you are exhausted, but there’s always the unknowable.” It is hard to imagine he wasn’t thinking of planes randomly falling out of the sky.

William Hoyt saw people through the binoculars. They were strewn across the Western Ridge. Some were not moving, but others were. Up until that point, he had had no idea other people were on the mountain. He saw no flags flying over their devastated camp. They could be from anywhere. For all he knew, they could be pesky Nazis climbing in enemy territory. The States were not at war with Germany, but best to leave them alone. If this was some sort of strange military operation, and the exploding plane increased the likelihood of that, then more violence could ensue.

Nonetheless, Hoyt did not hesitate. He told the rest of his team the plans had changed. They were giving up their bid for the summit and instead crossing the Northern Face in order to aid those who were still alive and possibly stranded. Taylor and Zeigler urged him to reconsider, but Hoyt was convinced it was God’s will they forego glory and practice kindness. Even if the rescue meant they would have to abandon their other team members below and risk returning home through forbidden Nepal, they were going to do it. Those at lower camps would ultimately leave Hoyt and the others for dead and go home. They would even have a pleasant surprise when they returned to civilization and found out their team leaders were indeed alive. It would all work out. It had to.

Starting from the Great Couloir, Hoyt’s men traversed the Northern Face, following one of the many coloured bands of rock cutting horizontally across. The traverse was long and risky. There was little snow or ice to give their crampons purchase. Pockets of loose scree made a slip likely, and any slip from here would almost certainly be fatal. The North Face is, after all, a mostly-featureless, steep slope dropping for over ten thousand feet. There is little to catch one’s fall. Between the risk of a fall and the Death Zone atmosphere, Hoyt and the others moved at a glacial pace.

With the sun beginning to set many hours later, Hoyt approached the Western Ridge. “The scene was now quite clear,” Hoyt wrote. “Three bodies were entangled with one another, as if rolled up together by two giant fingers. There was no question they were dead. Very little blood was visible, but there was no movement, and any exposed skin was bone-white.

“About one hundred feet higher up the ridge, I saw a man, possibly a Sherpa, standing over another man who was bleeding near his abdomen. The two figures looked desperate. They had likely gone for some time without supplemental oxygen. The standing man was hardly standing at all. He had to keep resting his hands on his bent knees. Occasionally, he would get the energy to wave us over.”

When Hoyt finally reached the two survivors, Ang Kikuli introduced himself. He said he could not get his charge down the mountain alone. He would need help. Hoyt explained they could help carry the man down the mountain, provided there was food, air, and shelter for the northern expedition on the way down the south side of the mountain. If not, they would have to back-track to the safety of their own camps on the other side of the Northern Face. Ang Kikuli said there would be no problem once they down-climbed past the ruined High Camp. Hoyt’s team could simply use the rations of the dead men. But