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

Moist and reeking of mildew, the atmosphere belching from the darkness is far from inviting. It is actually quite unnerving. The expedition and their new guides entered the cave, the Americans possibly questioning whether they might have been better off scaling the Pass overhead.

After only seven yards the cave narrows slightly to seven feet. It also grows dimmer. The walls become amethyst after three more yards. The mineral’s reflective nature multiplies natural light, keeping things bright for a while. Even after forty yards, one can see a point of light from the rear because of the bright walls and also because the cave is so straight. However, well before a furlong, without the help of lanterns or torches, travelers are completely shrouded in dark and mildew. It varies little in terms of altitude and direction, and so the walking is relatively painless. But as someone who has been through Tunnel One, the author can attest to its less than comforting impact on the psyche. The claustrophobia can get the better of you if you dwell too long on the facts you cannot stretch your arms out to full extension, and men block your exits in both directions. Breath already restricted by altitude is restricted further by the cave’s scarce oxygen, producing a feeling in the traveler of a belt tied around one’s chest and synched up several notches too far. Then there is the sound. Near the entrances and exits, one hears constant rushes of air whistling through the ears. As one moves toward the core of the ridge, one mile within the Earth, the rushing has ceased and is replaced by a pervasive, heavy Nothing. Air pressure on the ears increases and close quarters make for no echo at all. Man-made sounds seem muted. If the dark did not fulfill the sense of premature burial, then the dulled sound hammers in the final nail. The cave continues like this – straight, narrow, and evoking death - for almost two miles before spitting travelers out into the blinding daylight on the other side.

They walked single file, Sherpa, porters, expedition members, Man-Children, and one yak. Mano and Hoyt took the lead, the former before the latter. Chhiri Tendi was not far behind. The other expedition members were distributed quite randomly along the line; Chatham and Ferguson close behind Hoyt - separated only by the yak - Thornton and Wilde near the middle, and Drake and Yuudai in the rear (Yuudai may have walked all the way in the rear because he feared having an American travel behind him. Accounts suggest that any interaction with him up to that point had been extremely unpleasant). The entire line of hundreds was spread out roughly one mile from fore to aft.

Progress up until the last portion of the cave was by all accounts smooth, albeit unpleasant on the nerves. The men walked comfortably. Only the yak complained at first. Although a sure-footed beast, the yak did not take to the dark nor did it appreciate the enclosed space. It snorted and reared back its head. The man-child guiding the yak needed to fight with the animal repeatedly. With that exception, the journey through the cave started peacefully.

Hoyt wrote: “As we grew more accustomed to the darkness and the monotony, my mind began to wander. I thought about these large infants who guided us. I understood they came from all corners of the Earth and that they worshipped the mountain, but other questions remained in my mind. For example, how did they survive? Did they farm and hunt? They certainly did not seem the type to live off of the land; they took turns pushing each other in baby carriages for goodness sake! No, they must subsist on something else. Someone takes care of them.”

It had already been a day of firsts for Hoyt. He had laughed. He had patted someone on the back. He had even stated an ontological thought in front of Ferguson in the tent that morning. Now, possibly out of boredom, Hoyt did the unthinkable and struck up a conversation. He asked Mano about his people and their culture. Hoyt later tried to recreate a transcription of the cave conversation from memory in his journal.

ME: “So, you’re children who are men.”

MANO: “Well, we are men of course. We choose to act like children. Licorice?”

ME: “No thank you.” [He seemed to offer people sweets quite a bit. I am not sure where he stowed them.] “Do you know how to hunt?”

MANO: “No.”

ME: “Does anyone in your little group know how to hunt?”

MANO: “We are not so little and no.”

ME: “Do any of you know how to tend a garden?”

MANO: “What is a garden? I’m just kidding. But no, none of us knows how to tend a garden. Not to mention that the earth around the monasteries cannot be farmed. The soil is rocky and devoid of nutrients. My bunting is too small and riding up my bottom.”

ME: “How frustrating your answers are! Then tell me, how is it you aren’t dead from malnutrition?”

MANO: “Allowance.”

ME: “Come again?”

MANO: “Allowance.”

I paused for a quite a while, trying to imagine what in the blazes this oddity was going on about. We heard someone down the line whining like a baby, complaining in Spanish about having to make water. Mano yelled back in fluent Spanish that the person should “hold it.”

ME: “Explain yourself. What allowance?”

MANO: “Look around you.”

ME: “I see nothing.”

MANO: “Lift your lantern to the walls.”

I held my lantern to the stone surrounding us. It was no longer amethyst. The cold, sweating surface still had a shine to it, but it was much duller now with a yellow-brownish cast. I stopped, removed my knife from my belt and scraped. The scar in the wall glistened marvelously. Gold. “Allowance” Mano repeated.

It seemed the man-children returned to Fumu regularly not only to worship, but to harvest the gold of her fortress. The lava tubes extending out from her burrow through gold,