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

cycle, it also increased the rate at which the slit exposed itself. Within a few hours, Yuudai was geared up and staring at a hole in the granite wall large enough to allow a man passage. There was no light in it. What was in there? It could be anything or it could be nothing. It could lead to an escape or it could end just beyond the extent of his eyesight. Shaking from hunger, Yuudai lugged himself and his pack into the darkness.

So began his blind journey through the inside of Fumu. Terrified and practically guaranteed the death of a pharaoh’s wife, he stumbled forward. A catacomb of lava tubes presented themselves as alternatives for travel, but without sight, none of the options was preferable to the others. Decisions would have been superfluous. He just kept moving.

When light did appear, it appeared with a vengeance. The dead lava tubes he traveled often crossed live lava tubes and would illuminate the space, the atmosphere would become superheated, and the air would be replaced with poison. He had to cover his mouth with his shirt at such times and sidestep these obstacles. If he could not sidestep them, he would backtrack and try another route. After what he estimated was a day of wandering (he had no way of telling time so this was certainly was a loose estimate), panic set in. He had almost run out of the water he had collected in the snow cave, he had no food, and the lack of light brought on a kind of madness.

Several more days passed. He had stripped of all clothing save his undergarments. He moved forward with eyes closed because they were of no use to him anymore. Such a crucible would have stopped most men within an hour. Yuudai was not most men. Here he was, possibly days into his ordeal, eating crumbs, drinking nothing, and yet still moving forward.

On what he estimated was the second day, he heard water trickling. Yuudai found a vent carrying enough steam to form condensation on the walls. He drank deeply even though the water tasted of sediment. Unable to see where the droplets fell, he licked the walls in desperation. With this dire need sated, Yuudai collapsed in relief. He believes he slept for more than a day in the darkness. Or was it two? Upon awaking, he collected as many of the droplets as he could in the darkness, listening for liquid hitting metal and then holding his canteen steady for an hour. Then he started moving again toward God knows what. A cul-de-sac? A sudden eruption of lava through the walls roasting flesh and muscle? An unseen drop-off sending him thousands of feet down? Or perhaps freedom? Maybe he would see home again. Despite his rugged good looks and extensive travel, he had not yet met a woman with whom he would want to spend his life. Might he get the chance? Might he get the chance to see his father again and make him proud with his heroic return from Nepal and subsequent victories in battle? Yuudai could not know the answers to these questions. But he did know that he would do everything in his power to escape. He would keep moving. That then would leave the decision exclusively with Fumu.

Yuudai fell down a vertical lava tube. He fell very far, but only bumped his shins at the bottom. The feeling of descending was disheartening even though he knew he had started at a high altitude. When surrounded by darkness, the sense of going downward was smothering. It felt as if he had tripped into a graveyard plot. The end of the journey had come. He would never be found. He was destined to disintegrate over millennia and become one with this mute, eternal strata of granite.

His eyes had been closed because of their lack of utility. But by chance, he happened to open them now. And to his surprise, he could make out a light source only feet away from him; not direct sunlight but light nonetheless. It was a wall, not of rock but of ice. With little room for leverage and almost no strength left in his body, Yuudai used his ice axe to break through the obstruction, striking ice and crying out with each blow. It only took three swings for the ice to break, and that was when he met his present company.

Since watching Hoyt abandon him, Yuudai had burrowed through the heart of the world’s tallest mountain - perforating it from the Maw on the north side to the Icy Bellow on the south - and lived to see daylight again.

After Yuudai ate, drank, told his tale, gathered his energy, and digested the idea of the Human Totem Pole, the group went back to the work of escaping. Yuudai, who was slightly larger than the Sherpa, took his place on McGee’s shoulders. The three Sherpa came next. Then River Leaf. On the first attempt, with no moment of wavering, River Leaf reached up and out of the Oculus. She used her ice axe to hold fast to the blindingly bright outside world, slowly coming to stand on the Sherpa’s shoulders. With a small jump and a prayer of hope she had learned from her people, River Leaf was out. The totem pole below her fell, but fortunately they fell backwards and not into the mouth of the dead volcano. River Leaf dropped a rope down. She secured herself, making her body almost parallel with the ice on which she stood and pulled out McGee. And one by one, the people rose from the hole. The geysers responsible for killing Morrow a week earlier were a long but gentle climb away. The party moved south toward the towers of steam.

They were on their way home.

Interlude

A nurse on the ward here once told me to “get some rest” after I offered up the fact that the