Hell Is Above Us: The Epic Race to the Top of Fumu, the World's Tallest Mountain by Jonathan Bloom (bookreader TXT) 📗

in order to move through it. And even though the sun now shone through clouds of blown snow, the wind made life miserable. It must have permeated their clothing and chilled their cores. Cole’s frostbite had gotten worse. His cheeks were black. The fingers within his right glove were immobile. Although tethered to Junk, he trailed behind his leader by a full rope’s length. Junk would feel the rope jerk taut as Cole would collapse in exhaustion. But each time, he would get up again and continue.

They travelled as close to dead center along the ridgeline as possible. The north side of the ridge, to their right, was hidden by cornices jutting out over the North Face and the Icy Bellows below. Straying from their route even a touch in that direction could mean a fall of thousands of feet. However, should they overcompensate and walk too close to the sheer cliff to their left, crumbling ice could give way and send them down into the ruins of the Maw, also thousands of feet below.

The din of the volcano now drowned out all other sound. Even when speaking in close proximity, the entire content of one’s lungs was required. On occasion, smoking volcanic bombs of all shapes and sizes – cylindrical, bread crust, cored - dropped from the sky or rolled out of the cloud along the ridge. The falling debris left the snow pack dotted with holes of varying size, each one ringed with sooty ice, and some expelled wisps of smoke that would get caught up in the high winds immediately upon exit. Sometimes a piece of debris would hit a climber, but so far the pieces that had made contact were small and caused no problems other than leaving marks on clothing.

Pasang Dolma climbed several yards behind Cole. Unlike the Americans ahead of him, Pasang Dolma carried much of the weight of that evening’s camp on his back. The weight slowed him down, but not much. He was strong and experienced. According to Junk’s notes, the Sherpa showed no indications of exposure to the mountain’s inhumane conditions. He did not have any frostbite. He did not suffer from altitude sickness. Granted, he was tired, but he seemed game to go forth. The same could be said about the four dyspeptic Sherpa. Pulling up the rear, they never relented. There were no pauses in their stride, only monotonous progress. They may have had the personalities of demented, cantankerous old gammers, but they were vital to the goal of establishing high camp.

And high camp was where they were headed. It would place them just below the permanent cloud of the summit, where the ground would be equal parts snow and ash whorled together like marble, the sunlight would never shine through, and Hope would be as scarce as air.

If Junk was despondent over the deaths of Morrow, Taylor, and Fenimore, and the likely deaths of McGee and River Leaf, we cannot know. More likely his brain was not capable of such consistent thoughts at that point. The same could be said regarding Cole and his lost academic writings. His focus must have been exclusively on taking the next step and forcefully ignoring his growing frostbite. Even though the entire team wore supplemental oxygen at this point, thinking through things rationally was still difficult.

Rationality would have helped because at approximately 11 am, a choice needed to be made. The ridge split in front of them into two ridges that paralleled one another rather closely. From the writings of Hoover’s team a few years back, they knew the ridge to the right would end abruptly after one hundred yards or so. The ridge to the left provided a straight shot to the cloud and the summit therein, but the ridge was steep and narrow. It was in between the two ridges that the other choice laid. It was the beginning of “Hoover’s Route” where Chhiri had witnessed Hoover’s decapitation. You may recall that it starts out pleasant enough, gradual, smooth and protected by ridge walls on both sides. But then it whittled down to almost nothing, merely a narrow ledge scarring the north face like a varicose vein. That was the ledge where Hoover had had his head jettisoned into the blue. Walking such a ledge would be risky, not only because it was as skinny, fragile, and vicious as a scorned mistress, but also because the wall above it rose at 100 degrees, meaning the climbers would have to lean out over the void. If the men could get past that ledge, then the route theoretically met up with a massive couloir which provided an easy, staircase-like path into the cloud and then the summit.

So there was the choice. Junk could choose straight and visible, but steep. Or he could choose meandering, gently sloping with one nasty ledge followed by terra incognita. No journal entries exist from this portion of the climb, but one must assume the choice he ultimately made was not considered too deeply. For as we now know, the condition of brain cells at 29,400 feet is frozen, slow, and depleted of sparks; certainly not conducive to rumination. Junk had lived, eaten, and breathed long shots his entire life. Now he chose the safe bet. He went for straight and steep, which in this case was the known quantity…at least up to the point of the permanent cloud. The “decision” made, the team pressed on, digging into the deep snow straight ahead of them, moving closer to where they would place Camp Four.

At about 6 pm, with the sun setting, the men dug in and set up their tents, canvas flapping violently in the high wind. They would try to sleep for six hours, and then Pasang Dolma, Cole, and Junk would leave the dyspeptic Sherpa behind and make for the summit. If all went well, they would be atop Fumu by sunrise. Then, triumphant, they would turn and make their way back to the distant world