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

belligerent. “That will not suffice for my needs!” No one bothered trying to understand him. He would just have to move with the team, and perhaps remain at Base Camp when they descended at the end of the day.

They reached Camp One at noon with the intention of staying for only an hour and then climbing down. Morrow made a bee line for his tent. He closed the flap and continued to mumble away. The rest of the team ate a small lunch, drank tea, and smoked. The ritual of smoking, so common on climbing expeditions, was especially precious for the team that afternoon. All of them were wrestling with the second death of the climb. The odds of survival on this journey were not good, and the rate of expiration so far only served to reinforce that truth.

After their needs were sated, the team broke apart and focused on individual strategies for calming nerves. Cole nursed his frostbitten cheek and read books on physics. Although he did keep a journal, most of his writings were meditations on particle physics. Small particles revolving around larger ones, trying to make connections. It did not matter that his brain was getting softer with each increase in elevation. The mere attempt to understand the words brought him comfort. McGee and Zeigler played guts poker for no money. The four surly Sherpa retired to their tents, not to be seen until it was time to go back down. The remaining Sherpa checked the camp for damages that may have occurred the night before..

Pasang Dolma and Junk soothed themselves in a manner common to those of exceptional character: They planned. They had hoped Fenimore and Cole would comprise a second team to the summit should their own attempt fail. The third team was to be comprised of Morrow and Zeigler. Fenimore was gone and Morrow was also gone albeit in a less literal sense. Morrow might return from his derangement, but there was no guarantee. McGee could not handle the final push. Pasang Dolma suggested River Leaf could make a go for the top. Junk chafed at this suggestion, becoming almost outraged. Junk would not say as much, but his respect for River Leaf was becoming greater by the day. It was beginning to border on fawning. He would bring her tea and help her put on her backpack. He asked for her opinion about the weather and the route ahead. Her responses were often shrugs. But when she did answer, she was almost always right. “If I am not mistaken” Cole wrote in his journal, “our fearless leader has become smitten with the Indian squaw!” Clearly, Junk was not going to risk River Leaf any more than he had to. They would have to consolidate down to two teams for the final attack, with Pasang Dolma and Junk comprising the first team, and Cole and Zeigler comprising the second.

Pasang Dolma and Junk also reviewed several details of Hoover’s climb from two years earlier. After one more day of acclimating on the Rakhiot Glacier, they would take a hard left at some hot pools of sulfurous water that bubbled only one hundred feet above their current location, and begin looping around the Icy Bellows, following its eastern lip. Hoover’s notes suggested the lip was not perfectly smooth. It had several steps, some of them twenty feet high and technically challenging. Hoover had lost three men on the lip, one to a loose cornice, one to the wind, and another who froze to death. That being said, the eastern lip was tea and crumpets compared to the western lip, so they would endure without complaint.

The eastern lip would then give way to the Eastern Ridge, the final path to the summit. They had seen no sign of the fastidious demon Hoyt since arriving at the Qila Sanctuary. If he was there, then he had taken the southern route. When Junk and his team reached the Eastern Ridge, provided the weather was clear, that would be the time when their rival’s fate would become clear. They would know whether Hoyt was ahead of them or behind them. It would be at the ridge that the south would become visible and Junk would see enemy camps adorned with prayer flags.

“Of course! The hot pools!”

The voice was Morrow’s. It burst forth from inside his tent.

He rushed out, hopping on one foot at a time as he pulled on his boots in a mad rush. He grabbed River Leaf’s arm, causing her to drop the pipe she was smoking, and told her to come with him. She broke free, clearly displeased with Morrow’s use of physical force. The old, reasonable Morrow came through. Calmly, he said to her, “Please.”

She walked with him. Junk reminded the two that they had to leave to go down the mountain in only a few minutes. Morrow waved Junk off, as if to say “Fine, fine. But leave us be for a moment.” Cole asserted himself into the small party, despite Morrow’s complaints. Cole had heard talk of hot pools, and wanted to go so he could heat his frostbitten face.

Morrow walked Cole and River Leaf up the mountain, away from Camp One. They were ascending to the edge of the Icy Bellows. Without their usual equipment, they moved rapidly. Ahead of them, snow blew every which way, fueled by the wind torrent of the Bellows.

The three struggled against thin oxygen, but that handicap did not stop Morrow from talking without end. Cole, an indefatigable documentarian, recorded Morrow’s academic-but-unhinged discourse later that day:

“In an ideal world, the memory of a trauma would be forgotten soon after the offending event. But of course, a trauma is defined by its being unforgettable. If the traumatic memory remains in consciousness, to be mulled over eternally, the subject will go insane. No, the best one can hope for with trauma is containment, and in the Science of the Mind, the term for containment is ‘repression.’