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

by the ghost of Henry Morgan. I would let the cold waves roll in over the tops of my feet and when they rolled out, it looked as if I was moving backwards. The thrill of that sensation never wore off, no matter how many times I did it. But my greatest joy on those excursions was building castles. They were glorious structures. Ten towers. Motes. Outer walls and inner walls. Flags of seaweed. Windows crafted using the poke of a finger. To this day, those castles are the source of some of my greatest pride.

I recall one time, I had finished a particularly exquisite masterpiece when my father walked over to review my work, which he usually did not do. As always, I was silent in the presence of Father. He stood over me in his Sunday suit, as tall as a mountain, his eyes taking in every side, corner, stairwell, and gate. “You are not done boy” he said through his moustache. I was confused. Clearly everything was there. I reviewed my work. Nothing was missing. I had even placed an extra gate outside of the mote. Then he explained. “What about the roads leading away from the castle? Where are you to go and how are you to get there? And while you are at it, you should start digging a hole. You will need passage to the Orient. I hear they have the world’s most delectable teas.”

It was at that moment I understood the heart of the Englishman. We are restless and hungry. The Englishman must expand outward. He must consume all. It is a wonder the Empire does not suffer from gout given all of our incessant gobbling. We consume and grow and then without wiping our mouths we consume and grow even more. “The American Thomas Payne be damned,” says the Englishman. “An island will rule continents”.

How big must we get? We consume countries, sub-continents, poles, and mountains. Is the goal to be everywhere all of the time and control everything? Have we deluded ourselves into believing we are in the process of transforming into gods? We proceed as if one day, the entire world will be part of the Empire and every living person an Englishman; and we will have no where to go but the celestial bodies; and we will conquer them too; and then we will meet the Deity himself who will greet us by saying “How good of you to finally arrive! I have been so lonesome in my omnipotence and look forward to giving up this monotheistic rubbish. All men can be gods, from the lowly bushman to the Queen! Would you please join me in steering the Universe on its holy course to Perfection?”

Folderol.

Yet here I am, in a tent on the back of a frozen, angry giant, lacking any basic comfort, far from everything I should hold dear, all in the name of my father’s – and my country’s – quite mad endeavor.”

Two days after writing that entry, Malick looked back at his men. They would not be joining him as he walked headlong into the filthy cloud hovering and spitting ash only a few hundred feet above them. Thousands of miles they had travelled for this moment. But an unspeakable Fear, more powerful than their pride, had gotten the better of those around him. Malick wrote in his journal, “Each expedition member and each Sherpa looked back at me with an expression suggesting they had seen a ghost.” But they had not. They had seen cannibals.

Or at least they had convinced one another they had had a run-in with a herd of cannibals some time in the night. What had been done to their colleagues Quimby and Hirst was enough to make almost anyone reconsider their priorities. Down climbing only hours away from the summit seemed reasonable. Maybe home and hearth were a legitimate option after you had witnessed good Christian men torn apart by the ghouls.

These people were traumatized and any debate about proceeding was unwinnable. They were going through hell. The cannibals were only one part of that hell. They were also dealing with an atmosphere simply not capable of sustaining human life. Each breath was futile and accompanied by a feeling of being buried alive. No one could think straight; moments of unwanted daydreaming were arrested by spells of total panic. And another type of hell awaited them if they continued to ascend. Ominous sounds came from the cloud. Explosions and grumblings. It stunk of chimney soot and eggs. It was already causing the expedition trouble before they had even reached it, showering ash on them as they slept the night before. One ember, still glowing as it spiraled gently downward, had landed on the backpack of Coville, the man in charge of maps, setting their route home ablaze.

But Malick would not consider turning and running. He was going to the summit even if it meant going alone with no high camp full of colleagues waiting for him afterwards. He had come too far and given up too much – no, he had given up everything - to be here. His wife had threatened to leave him and take his son with her should Malick decide to go on this damned fool expedition. It took him all of one minute after her threat to leave on the trip anyway. A volcano in the Himalaya! How could he, a man of adventure and discovery, resist such an opportunity? He would never see his wife and son again.

“I am letting my team go down,” Malick wrote the night before. “They are of no use to me or their country.” He waved to the men and wished them a safe descent. He then turned and began his journey to the top.

Three entries appear in his journal on July 16.

The first: “No air. Life not possble [sic] here. Wind is too powerful. Eruptions. No disernible [sic] top. Terrified.”

The second, in