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

using the American parlance for one thousand dollars. This surprised and thrilled Junk. He told Morrow he would be good for his percentage of the winnings, should Morrow win, when he returned to the States and got back on his feet. Morrow accepted this. Fenimore also approved of the stakes.

Three and three. The come out roll was a six, and six happens to be a smashing come out roll. Other than seven, six and eight are the most likely numbers to result from the role of two dice. Such is the case because there are so many combinations of two numbers between one and six that sum to six. One plus five equals six. Two plus four equals six. Three plus three equals six. That makes three different combinations. But now try to think of combinations that sum to five. One and four, three and two. Only two combinations. Nine is just as bad. It gets worse when you try to think of combinations that sum to three and eleven. Indeed, six was a terrific roll which probably made Morrow highly confident that he would win one thousand American dollars.

Morrow moved down the line. It must have been a pleasant temporary relief to stop and wait for climbers to pass, even though he would pay when he got to the end of the line, having to hike double-time to make it back to the front. As he worked his way through Cole, River Leaf, a Sherpa here and there, and McGee, no pair of rolls summed to six. He became frustrated. When he got to the irritable Kyidug and asked for a number (Junk had not told him to avoid conversation with the four Sherpa at the end of the line), Kyidug apparently responded by asking Morrow why he doesn’t put more focus on climbing and less on gaming. When Morrow strained his way back to the front of the group, still not hitting his come out roll, he complained to Junk about the quality of the Sherpa they had secured for the expedition. “Rude.” “Disrespectful.” “Insolent.” These were the words he used in his rage. He also recalled that the Kyidug character had been the one to spit on the monastery they had passed on their way to the Qila Sanctuary. Pasang Dolma, who was in ear shot of the Junk and Morrow, apologized profusely. He took responsibility for the hiring of the four Sherpa. He had had no problem finding regular porters and cooks, but high altitude Sherpa had been hard to obtain. With the war going on in Europe and foreigners unable to visit the Himalaya, most Sherpa had taken on other vocations to survive, the majority of them humping supplies through the passes between Nepal and Tibet. They could not walk away from these responsibilities. Therefore, Pasang Dolma had to take what he could get. Most of the hires were of the best quality, he said, but four of them came without any reference but their own. He was not even sure they were Sherpa. They may have been of another Nepalese race. Appeased by Pasang Dolma’s apology, Morrow chose not to go on with his litany of complaints.

Morrow was still collecting numbers. He asked Junk for one. “Six.” There was the problem with Icefall Craps. Junk had provided a number he must have known would make attaining the come out roll impossible: Six plus any number, of course, could not equal Morrow’s come out roll of six. Junk apparently said through a laugh and iced-over beard, “I was just trying to be arbitrary in my choice. I was not trying to vex you.” Despite the inevitable fact this roll could only be bad or neutral, Morrow grunted and moved to catch up with Fenimore to get a number to add to six. Fenimore led the team about thirty feet ahead.

Unfortunately for Morrow, the way became steeper in those thirty feet, so getting that second, useless number was an arduous task; Fenimore ahead of him was approaching an ice bridge, a structure which bulged up as it passed over a rather nasty, gaping bergschrund several hundred feet deep. The bulge made the whole thing look not unlike a pedestrian bridge one sees crossing over a pond in a city park, rising to a rounded peak in the center of its span. But this bridge had no flirting young lovers on it and no lily pads floating by. It was nothing but a blinding white hill of ice and snow hovering precariously over a slit in the earth. Morrow must have strained himself quite a bit getting up to Fenimore.

According to my interview with Pasang Dolma years later, Morrow made it up to Fenimore but hiked behind him, not able to summon the energy to make it the extra three feet required to hike abreast with the man. No one could hear, but he was most certainly asking for a number from Fenimore when the bridge, possibly compromised by the expedition crossing over it the day before, gave way. Fenimore’s response to Morrow became a drawn out, screaming “one” as he fell into the schrund. The entire bridge collapsed, from approach to approach. The ends broke cleanly, so that the snow on both sides came to rest at their angles of repose, blending into the landscape around them seamlessly. “It looked as if a bridge had never been there at all,” Pasang Dolma recalled.

The only evidence something had been there was Morrow. He had been spared from a fall because he had been climbing behind Fenimore by mere feet, and also because his axe, tied to his belt, had become lodged in the ice. He was not yet out of the woods. The terrain upon which he now depended was loose. At any moment, he could begin sliding to the edge and then take the fast journey downward to join Fenimore, and then, shortly afterwards, God. Adrenaline exploded inside both Junk and Pasang Dolma. They rushed forward