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

warning. Loud snapping can be heard at random intervals followed by seracs the size of city buildings falling into the hidden depths of the glacier. The force generated by these large objects hitting one another leads to the physical process of sublimation; ice is converted directly from a solid to a gas, skipping the liquid stage entirely. As a result, steam rises all around. Atop the glacier at Camp One that night, Morrow would write: “The icefall offers a visual paradox, what the Europeans call an “impossible object.” You hike atop the glacier, but you are also not ‘atop’ it because there are seracs above you and below you. There is no reliable horizontal plane, no reliable horizon, no floor.” The goal was to make it up this impossible object on the first day and establish Camp One near the lip of the Icy Bellows. They would then climb down and back up twice more in order to acclimate. On the fourth day, September the fourth, they would strike out from Camp One and make their way along the eastern lip of the Icy Bellows. Halfway to the Eastern Ridge, they would establish Camp Two, further taming the unruly mountain.

The transition from hiking relatively flat ground to ascending the mountain proved jarring for everyone’s respiratory system. They were winded. To compensate, they hiked at a very slow pace. Any slower, and the glacier upon which they hiked would outpace them in the opposite direction and thus return them to Base Camp. Even for the most seasoned climbers, taking constant breaks and massaging cramped muscles were mandatory.

As they began the ascent, wending their way through the great maze of the icefall, McGee was complaining. He was not complaining about exhaustion any more than the others (the hike from Darjeeling and then around the base of the mountain from south to north had gotten him into relatively good shape), nor was he complaining about heights quite yet. He was complaining about glare. One thing many new climbers do not expect is the intensity of the sun at such high altitudes. Paired with the reflective snow and ice, the result is blinding. When Junk’s team was in the shade, the world was a gorgeous luminous blue. When they moved out into the frigid sunshine, vision was lost. Even with the aid of goggles, squinting was a must.

The landscape was marred by rather unpleasant touches that alerted the team to the threats that faced them at every moment. After only three minutes on the icefall, they came across a severed arm. It was devoid of clothing and colour so there was no way to identify its owner. The poor sot could have been any one of the countless individuals who had lost their lives on the northern route. The accident may have happened hundreds or even thousands of feet higher up the mountain; the glacier’s slow downward motion delivering the arm to its current location over the course of decades. After the arm, Junk’s team came across a length of rope tied to a piton and dangling off the side of a crevasse. “Fortunately, no one was tied to it” Cole wrote.

“I do not believe our team could have handled any more macabre visions. The rope’s free end simply blew in the gentle updrafts of the crevasse. Less than one hour after the rope, we came across a sight far less explicable. Two legs and feet stuck straight up out of the ice. German boots and grey woolen pants still adorned the limbs. There was no blemish in the ice around them. Junk posited that perhaps a crevasse had crashed shut on the fellow and then fused after years of wind and temperature fluctuations. No one else in the party bothered to venture a guess. They simply looked on with concern. It was hard to reconcile all of this unpleasantness with the blinding sunshine and blue skies arcing above us.”

Using his uncanny mental talents to memorize the map and Hoover’s route along the icefall, Morrow led the way. His challenge was not a simple one given that an icefall is not a static thing. Some crevasses had formed anew since Hoover’s time and several fallen seracs had blocked the way. The team had to adjust their route somewhat and they proved quite adept at it. Pasang Dolma was alongside Morrow and he seemed to have a good sense of safe routes to take. Not far behind Morrow and Pasang Dolma were Zeigler and River Leaf, followed by Fenimore, followed by Junk and McGee. The remainder of the Sherpa brought up the rear. The team had made the unusual decision to not tie off to one another on the icefall. If a snow bridge or a serac gave way, Junk did not want the bad luck of one person pulling the remainder down. The unsafe nature of an icefall is usually the exact reason why a team would tie off. If one person falls, the others can arrest themselves and stop the person from dropping. But Junk the gambler felt his team was comprised of good judges of terrain and would know what routes to avoid. In addition, ropes hinder faster climbers and put pressure on slower ones. No, Junk wanted to wait until they were on steep, technical portions of the mountain before breaking out the ropes. They would play the odds on the icefall in order to make for a faster, more comfortable ascent.

Occasionally the route would come to an unexpected dead end. Once, the team had to take out pitons and ropes and climb a near vertical face some forty feet tall. It was their first experience with technical climbing on Fumu (aside from the Qila Pass where the Sherpa had done all of the hard work). Ropes, crampons, and pickaxes proved invaluable as they made their way up the wall. Those with more experience climbed beneath those with less and motivated them with compliments, advice, and distractions. After