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

with what you were doing. Cole, get Zeigler down to Camp Two. Everyone else, we will sit tight until Cole gets back.” This command did not have any obvious effect. All eyes were still on him, possibly awaiting some explanation for his unexpected plan.

The surprises continued. It was not Cole who challenged Junk, nor was it Zeigler. Nor Pasang Dolma. Nor the dyspeptic Sherpa. It was River Leaf. Standing twice as tall as she ever had before, storming across the lip toward Junk as if not the faintest breeze passed by, she came within inches of him. “What’s wrong with your head? What’s wrong with your heart?” This was likely all she could muster.

Junk replied. “The assault will not be called off! Odds are Patrick’s dead. Would you want to climb down the Bellows and then the darkness underneath to retrieve a corpse? Would Patrick have wanted us to do that? And what if he’s alive? You have no idea what a one million dollar bet will make a man do. Especially him. If he’s alive, he’ll find a way out and meet us at Base Camp. Bet he’s planning it now. I don’t share much with William Hoyt, but like him, I have Faith. True, it’s not faith in a bearded man in space pulling the strings of Destiny. Rather, it is faith in a fat Irishman stuck in a hole.”

Denial. The only answer was denial. Junk probably could not accept a loss of such magnitude and his mind had concocted some happy ending in which this all works out with McGee in one piece and a victorious return to Boston. “No doubt abot [sic] it.” Cole wrote. “It was denali [sic].”

River Leaf said testily, “This is not the streets of Boston, Aaron Junk.”

“That’s true” he replied. “The weather in Boston is far worse!”

She stormed off into her tent without another word.

Cole followed the orders of his team leader without question and helped Zeigler down to Camp Two with the aid of one of the dyspeptic – but now utterly surly – Sherpa. Junk, River Leaf, and the Sherpa waited in their respective tents for Cole to return. When sunset came without any sign of him, they made dinner and settled in for yet another wakeful night on the lip. Progress, it seemed, would have to wait.

Junk heard River Leaf leave her tent just before the last light had disappeared. The wind had laid down its arms with the end of day but still the air was frigid. When Junk ventured outside to investigate River Leaf’s actions, he witnessed the night commencing clear. However, clouds in the distant west looked foreboding.

River Leaf was geared up and walking to the edge of the lip. Junk asked her what she was doing, although it was probably quite obvious to him. And indeed, and certainly to Junk’s dismay, her intention was to climb down the Bellows in search of McGee. At the very least, she would make it to The Oculus and call down to him. If in the hole she saw a climbing route and maybe some sort of floor or ledge below, she would descend into it despite the frigid air inexplicably blasting forth from it at all times. If the hole was a long black void with no visible bottom, only then would she give up. Without being asked River Leaf added that she had no intention of returning to the expedition. With or without McGee, she would make her way north up and out of the Bellows, down the Rakhiot Glacier, and then leave the entire Qila Sanctuary on her own.

Such actions were unheard of on mountain expeditions. No team member disobeyed their leader and no team member simply walked away from the campaign. But those thoughts were not the ones crossing Junk’s mind. He wrote that evening:

“Distraught. Might be the altitude, but I want to cry for the first time in my lif [sic]. So lovely. So strong. So delicate. But so short the courting. She was leaving. Oh to lose her only hours after falling for her. My pain from McGee I could hide, but not this. I begged her not to go. If McGee’s alive, he’ll make it. She wouldn’t respond to that. I think I love you. She wouldn’t respond to that. Don’t you want to make it to the top? She responded to that. And she said mor [sic] than she ever had before. I never had any interest in making it up there, she said. I was just going where you told me because I was lost and had nowhere to go ever since leaving my family. I went where I was taken. By anyone. Not any more. There’s nothing up there, she sad [sic]. Nothing but ice, fire, and wind. For you, she said, there’s also a victory. And your reasoning to not retrieve McGee seems convenent [sic] in light of that victory. You’ve turned away from your oldest friend for a win with nothing good or right about it. I’m done following you to stupidity and deth [sic], she said. i will go where I wish now. I said but you have no home. Where will you go? I’ve been called an Indian my whole life, she said. So perhaps I’ll try my luck in Calcutta.”

With this, River Leaf turned and jumped off the side of the lip. She dropped down a chute between two jagged rocks. With grace, she placed her ice axe in the snow and began a gentle glissade into the darkness. She was gone. McGee was gone. The flame of euphoria that had brightened Junk’s life over recent days was extinguished; snuffed out in perfect time with the dimming of the day.

Junk would wake up at first light to the return of Cole and the surly Sherpa, but no Zeigler. “He couldn’t do it” Cole said. “The pain of altitude sickness passed, but he’s still spent. He’s in the care of