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

the women in the room, but after that a dreadful silence fell again. Phurbu Tawa looked down at the body in horror. This was not a look the others had seen on his face before. He did not wear it well.

The other eight Gurkhas looked around the room at the now standing crowd. The one on the far left walked forward and pointed his kukri at Phurbu Tawa. “This is not over. We can wait decades for revenge!” he hissed. The remaining Cobras turned on their heels and marched out into the frigid night. Snow blew in as they walked out. The last man in the line got his snake caught in the door on the way out. Robbing the cobras of their dramatic exit, the man opened the door again to pull the snake free.

The Sherpa all looked down at the dead man and the growing pool of blood. This type of violence was unusual for them. They were accustomed to the occasional row between inebriated neighbors fighting over women, but those fights usually ended with hugs and slaps on the back. Tonight was quite different. The owners of the home rushed forward after a few moments to clean up the body and prepare it for a funeral. The rest of the partygoers mumbled to one another and began to leave. Phurbu Tawa was without words and he wore an expression of perplexity on his face. How could this have happened? His life had been about peace. Was the threatening of his family justification for going against his core beliefs like this?

Phurbu Tawa was a changed man after the episode. He drank to excess. He did not work as often, forcing Chhiri Tendi to begin porting at an early age. Sometimes at night, when Chhiri Tendi would toss and turn awaiting sleep’s gentle kiss on the forehead, he would hear his father crying in the dark. His mother would scold his father, telling him to be a man, to stop weeping, to go to sleep. “What kind of man am I?” Phurbu Tawa would respond. “I’ve killed a person in cold blood! I can be a man if I stop crying, but a terrible man. That is not much of a reason to stop.”

Shortly thereafter, in rapid succession, both of Chhiri Tendi’s parents died. With his mother it was due to natural causes. She was milking a yak and fell over dead. Chhiri Tendi’s heart fell from a great height at the loss. His father died four months later. Walking home from a neighbor’s after a bout of drinking, he was attacked in the night. He had a knife wound in his gut. Around his neck was a dead, stuffed cobra. A note was found inside his shirt. I questioned Chhiri Tendi’s translation of the note from the original Nepalese because it is a doltish sentiment conveying little sense, but Chhiri Tendi claims the translation is perfect: “The Nepalese Cobras are fear.” Likely, the authors meant to suggest they were the personification of terror and caused fear, not that they were the personification of fear. Whatever the point, the message was left on Chhiri Tendi’s father.

Chhiri Tendi wanted nothing more than to exact brutal revenge for the murder of his father, but he also knew that in the exacting, he would become the thing he, his father, and his people reviled. Perhaps some day he could serve justice to these thick-witted revolutionaries. That “some day” would likely be when the Cobras returned to kill him. Yes, he would avenge his father at that time, but he would be sure not to draw blood in the process.

Chapter Twelve: A Team Divided

Hoyt climbed step by labored step up the awful scree. He kept looking back at his fellow climbers, quite certain one of them would falter soon. The weather was unbearable. Wind and snow pelted the team like enemy fire. The annual monsoon was not yet finished with its unbridled abuse of Asia, and Hoyt’s team was feeling the extent of it now on the southern side of Fumu, even if the northern side remained in full, glorious sunlight. It had been overcast but otherwise pleasant when they set out from Base Camp. Then after three hours on the mountain the sky opened up and loosed its wrath.

The pairing of weather and terrain was dreadful. The scree was notorious for its “giving” character, offering up boulders as gifts for the inattentive. Most individuals who brave the scree receive these gifts in a manner fatal; some decapitated, others taken for a ride back down to Base Camp. Now with the visibility at nearly zero, rocks could be heard coming, but could not be seen until they were immediately in front of the victim. “We hear the giant ‘bang bang’ of a boulder rolling down the hill,” wrote Hoyt. “The sound gets louder and louder, but we see nothing. Then it materializes in front us, the size of a damned elephant. It goes barreling past us and disappears, back into the whiteness. Then it happens again a minute or so later, and then again. Some of them are close enough to touch. Not easy to keep calm given the situation.” The team had even decided not to tie off to one another. God forbid a boulder should catch a rope and pull several men down instead of one. Hoyt felt if they made it to the planned location of Camp One at the top of the scree without losing a man and turning tail, it would be a bloody miracle.

One thing was certain. As planned, acclimatization would indeed not involve the scree. Once they were up, they would stay up until they were done with their expedition. The falling rocks and lack of footholds made climbing too risky. Chhiri Tendi had agreed with this plan, as had the other more experienced climbers on his expedition, Drake, Wilde, and Thornton. They would set up Camp One at