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

they would need to start the down-climb immediately. The sun was setting and the nearest camp was down on the Western Cwm. Hoyt agreed and they turned to the man on the ground, calculating the best method of carrying him.

It was then the man on the ground removed his mask and goggles. “I was too tired and too shocked to become enraged,” Hoyt wrote. “I saw the wincing face. I heard the pleas for help. I even heard him apologize. My response, not conscious at all mind you, was to go down on two knees, bend over, and emit sounds somewhere between laughing and crying. I had no idea what I was doing or what I was feeling. Perhaps that is what madness feels like.” According to Ang Kikuli, Hoyt was looking down and was impossible to read. He put a gentle hand on Junk’s leg, and then rocked back and forth.

After a few minutes, Hoyt rose and walked over to Taylor. He turned Taylor around quite roughly and began rummaging through his pack. Hoyt found what he was looking for and returned to Junk’s beaten body. “Help…me….help,” Junk expelled between gasps, unvoiced, merely whispered loudly, hands clutching his chest.

Hoyt took the bottle of Jameson’s from Taylor’s pack and placed it on Junk’s belly. Then he yelled, “Stay away from drunks! Their eyes are bloodshot and they have bruises that could have been avoided!” He paused. “You do not have the pedigree for this line of work.” Then he started to down-climb. Taylor and Zeigler did not follow. It was mutiny, but he did not care. Hoyt abandoned them all and descended to the Western Cwm. He did not stop at that camp, for he was intent on keeping ahead of the others all the way home. Junk, living or corpse must not catch up to him. He would come down Everest alone, accompanied only by his rage.

Years later, mountaineers with backgrounds in military history would climb Everest and study the remnants of the plane that lay shredded and burnt along the Western Ridge. It turned out to be a Spitfire Mark 1, a British fighter plane. It had been flying over “The Hump” on its way to delivering weapons to China, which was embroiled in the Sino-Japanese War at the time. Granted, the British did not officially start transporting weapons to China until 1941 when the Asian theatre of World War II rose from the Pacific. But secretly, and slowly, British leaders were planning ahead, sensing Japan’s threat early on. The route over the Himalaya was still fresh to most pilots, and apparently this one had flown too close to Fumu and damaged his wing.

As the men of the two Everest expeditions descended the mountain, the world around them was descending into fire. September 1939 saw Hitler’s invasion of Poland and England’s entry into the war. The Blitz would follow within a year’s time. All but the Sherpa on these expeditions would have to navigate a brutal landscape to get to their respective homes. But although the world around them was at war, and despite the fact their own nation would enter the fray in only a few years’ time, Hoyt and Junk would remain indifferent. The only war that mattered to them was their own, and it was only one more insult away from the final battle.

On the way down the mountain, moving from camp to camp, Hoyt had no choice but to tell the Sherpa of Junk’s fate. Many of them immediately responded by getting geared up and climbing up to the next higher camp to see if they could help in some way. Tired, defeated, and bitter beyond his ken, Hoyt was now looking down at the rocky southern Base Camp. It was only three days after the drama on the Western Ridge. He had made amazing time on the way down.

About one hundred yards before reaching the tents, he came across the alleged frotteurist Browning, oblivious to the presence of another person. Back turned to Hoyt, Browning was geared up for climbing except he wore no trousers. Fishnet stockings rose from his boots to his thighs. “He was singing an American jazz standard to himself (“Living Easy”) and pointing to an invisible audience. There was no camera this time. When I got close enough for him to hear me, the Brit turned round. He was in utter shock at my presence. The shame burned brightly in his eyes. But I am sure mine burned brighter. This man, whoever he was, must have been sent by the Lord himself to remind me who I had become. A freak, stripped of all Dignity. I looked at him in shock and terror, as if looking in a mirror at my true Nature. After what seemed like an eternity of failed thought, the half-naked man yelled at me ‘I can explain!’ Perhaps he could. But could I?”

Interlude: July 14, 1881

Roughly 25,000 up Fumu, sitting alone in his tent at Camp Five, George Malick wrote in his journal. He wrote more than usual and spent what little energy he had left on topics more expansive than the day-to-day drudgery of climbing the mountain. The lucidity of the prose suggests he wore his oxygen mask in order to retain focus. One cannot help but read his entry on that day and think George Malick was aware of his coming demise:

“I remember as a boy being on holiday with my family at Blackpool. We went there quite regularly. Specialists claimed the salt air provided therapy for my mother’s manic prostration. Perhaps I was five years old. I was a small, frail child. The cold weather of England paired with my sensitivities did not permit a soak in the ocean. I spent my hours playing in the sand. I would find a stick and write messages I hoped would be read from far across the sea and across the spandrels of time