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

view of the peak, I cannot ‘read’ the mountain. It is like a giant Mohamedan woman, the cloud her veil and the volcanic explosions her ululations. Mysterious. Terrifying.

As nauseating as the future looks for my crew and me, there is no turning back now. The journey to arrive here was grueling. We have crossed the Rubicon. We are going up.

Yours,

W.J.H.

The journey to get to Fumu was indeed grueling for Hoyt’s team, and especially for Hoyt himself. The difficulties began right after the meeting with Junk in New York, when he had to tell Wizzy of his plans. She had tolerated the Everest expedition two years earlier, but when he told her of his plans to take on another Himalayan mountain, she raised her voice at her husband for the first time in their marriage. She called him unstable and suggested that perhaps William had inherited his mother’s insanity. She said that he had lost his religion, his family, and his bearings. His need to climb and his need to compete with Aaron Junk were distracting him to the point where family was an afterthought. “For William” Wizzy wrote a dear friend just before the Fumu ascent, “remembering to spend time with me has become like remembering to pay the taxes. Now he is planning some far-flung adventure about which I am to have no information. This can only further isolate him from his sons and me. The boys do not know their father. Before they went off to college they knew him only as some hulking figure that was sometimes in the house, mumbling at the newspaper, telling them not to slurp their soup, or snoring too loudly. Now he is someone they only see at Thanksgiving and Christmas because those holidays do not fall during his normal climbing season.” The war in Europe was a blessing for Wizzy because it kept William at home except for a few weekend excursions. But now not even a global conflagration could stop him from climbing.

Wizzy gathered up her nerve and gave Hoyt an ultimatum: Stay with her, visit the boys at college regularly and stop climbing, or continue to climb and live without her. Hoyt did not see this as a choice. As much as he loved her – whatever “love” was to the William Hoyt of 1941 – he had to see this competition through to its conclusion, and the conclusion was so close. It was no longer about the love of climbing. In fact, he felt he was at a place in life where perhaps he could walk away from the Thrill of the Ascent. His body was certainly telling him to reign in; that the grid of New York City was not such a bad place to spend his time. No, it had nothing to do with climbing any more. To use his words from his Fumu journal, Hoyt said it had everything to do with “Vanity and Wrath.” “I sense there is a little Gluttony in there as well, but I would be hard-pressed to explain why without sounding like some effeminate, French poet. Yes, let us leave it at Vanity and Wrath.”

On the morning of May 22nd, he planned to have a moving company take him and his unwieldy climbing equipment to the airport. He would then catch an airplane for the West Coast. Once there, he was to meet up with his team and his transportation to Burma at a beach in southern California. But before this series of events could transpire, Hoyt took the time to call his mother. He dialed from an empty house. His mother answered the phone. If there was anyone who Hoyt could tell about the secret of Fumu, about its unrivaled height, he could tell his mother. She may keep the secret, but even if she did not, no one would believe her. So Hoyt told her he was off to the Himalaya one more time for the purpose of conquering the tallest mountain in the world. According to Hoyt, Maddy replied in a manner so lucid he was momentarily convinced he was speaking to the wrong person. She was, in fact, painfully lucid. “I am so sorry I was not around to soften the blow of Father. I should have been around for you when you were a little boy.” Hoyt was not moved to tears by anything. Music. Death. No matter how emotional a situation, he remained as dry as fired clay. But at this sentence from his mother, he confessed to a pain in his throat. How would he have been different had she been available to him? Would he be less rigid? Would he be capable of joy? The possibilities were endless. Although he may not have felt this way, he quietly told his old mother it was quite alright and it was not her fault. Then she added a sentiment that simply embarrassed and confused William. “I should have nursed you. Then you would not be off doing these things.” She then mumbled something about the “damn Gypsies” controlling the weather and hung up. That would be the last time William and his mother would ever speak to each other.

Like Junk’s team, Hoyt and his men had to wait on the shore to be picked up by life boats. But in the case of Hoyt, the boats were manned by sailors from a ship captained by none other than Randolph Hoyt, William’s brother.

Randolph had served valiantly during World War One. He had been captain of the U.S.S. Impaction, a dreadnought-style battleship supporting the Royal Navy in the North Sea. In that capacity, he had received medals from both the United States and England for tirelessly assisting in keeping the German Navy at bay. Randolph retired from the Navy in 1931, but continued his life at sea as captain of a steam schooner called the S.S. Auxesis, mostly shipping lumber along the West Coast. It was April 1941 when Randolph was contacted by