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

all of the events that had transpired so far on the mountain. “The man could not have planned this better. We are alone now. Even Chhiri Tendi is gone. Now he is certainly going to drop the blade.” Sleep did not arrive at all for Hoyt on that third night above the scree. He tossed and fretted. Yuudai was going to murder him. And even if he was spared by some whim of God, the world he would live to see was an embarrassment. He had not even made it to Camp One and already the team was in disarray and the expedition in serious jeopardy. Did Hoyt really want to live through this? Did he want to experience a world in which Junk stood triumphant, soaking up the spotlight of history, while he wiped egg off his face in the shadows?

Yuudai entered Hoyt’s tent at five in the morning. A delirious Hoyt jumped out of his sleeping bag, fully clothed to shield from the cold. He pulled off his scarf to expose his neck. “Take me!” he yelled at Yuudai. “It is over! Better death than defeat!” Yuudai looked on quizzically. When no death arrived, Hoyt composed himself and put his scarf back on. He asked Yuudai what he wanted. In broken English, Yuudai spoke. “No Chhiri Tendi. What to do, Mr. Hoyt?”

What to do indeed. He had dilly-dallied long enough. It had not been a complete day since Chhiri Tendi had left, but it had been long enough given the storm. The decision Hoyt had to make at this point was no decision at all. Mountain climbing at its core involves a certain amount of recklessness in the sense you are doing something quite dangerous and you do not need to be doing it. But good mountain climbing requires Eros to counter Thanatos – a Rational Self to counter the Death Drive. This sensibility is usually innate. It is difficult to forge on the mountain; After all, if a climber does not know when to walk away from a climb, he does not live to become the reasonable climber. Hoyt was born with a sensibility that held fast in high pressure situations. This anchored his otherwise dangerous love of climbing in a bed of relative safety.

But apparently, all of that is rubbish, because Hoyt decided to continue the ascent. The snow was still coming down at an unholy clip and the wind had not let up. The Junk competition meant too damned much to Hoyt, and he was convinced if they simply struck out east as Chhiri Tendi had done, they would cross some evidence of the rest of the team. When the slab of ice had divided them, the others had been off to the east of the cut, so it made sense now above the origins of the ice, the other team’s camp was likely only a hundred yards away or so.

Of course, if it was that easy, then what had happened to Chhiri Tendi?

Roughly ten minutes after leaving Hoyt and Yuudai, Chhiri Tendi had come across a wide trail of relatively fresh tracks in the snow. He checked his compass. The tracks were heading due west which was far astray from their planned route. Chhiri Tendi followed them for what seemed like an eternity. Darkness began to fall and his digits became like ice. His nose felt as if it was made of marble. Darkness fell completely and he continued to struggle through the snow and wind. “I was convinced I had stumbled across the footprints of spirits whose job it was to lead me to the afterlife; because there was no way they were tracks of our team. They were too off course.”

But it was in fact their tracks after all. Chhiri Tendi came across the tents of the rest of the team at approximately 8pm on the evening of the third, frostbitten hand and frightened by his slog through certain death. Drake and Wilde welcomed him into their tent to get warm.

Drinking tea, wrapped in a blanket, Chhiri Tendi said nothing for a few minutes. Then he recalls inquiring about their circumstances.

The team openly admitted they were going to try for the summit regardless of Hoyt’s presence. In a rare display of profanity, Wilde summed up their reasoning thusly: “Hoyt is an asshole. We all know this to be true. Why wait for him or search for him? He can climb down if he’s lost. Any responsible man in reasonable health would do that. And we’ve busted our humps to get here. We are not going to turn around now!”

Chhiri Tendi was not supportive of this stance, so he changed the subject. “You are off course. Did you know that?”

“No, we didn’t.” Wilde said this while giving Drake a rather nasty look.

“That would be my fault” Drake responded. “You know I am a tinkerer. Well, I have completed work on a new invention that will help us with any technical sections of the mountain we may need to climb.” Drake pulled something out of his sleeping bag. It was circular, about eighteen inches in diameter, one inch thick, and wrapped in rags. Removing the rags, Drake now held a black disk that seemed rather heavy. It had two handles opposite each other along its circumference and one small knob halfway between the handles. The middle of the disk contained some dials and what appeared to be an antenna. Drake continued. “I call it ‘the magic rope.’”

Chhiri Tendi was confused and unimpressed. Why was this oversized dinner plate the reason for the party being off course? Drake did not help: “The magic rope is made of forty concentric bands of reinforced titanium, one of the sturdiest and lightest metals known to man. Each band is connected to its neighboring band by fifty hair-thin but powerful springs. With a turn of this small knob, each band of the rope will slide upward from the closest outside band. This means that, at full