Hell Is Above Us: The Epic Race to the Top of Fumu, the World's Tallest Mountain (13 page)

JUNK: “Do you have children?”

MANO: “Do you?”

JUNK: [Answering, but clearly not liking being asked] “No.”

MANO: “So why are you waltzing all over the planet? Why aren’t you at home making children? As monks of Fumu, we are sworn to celibacy. We are forbidden to have children because the act of having children stops one from being a child. But others should have them. Why else are you on this planet? Sucker?” [Holds out two lollipops]

JUNK: “That’s enough, Bruce.”

According to Oldhusband, Junk got up and walked out without a word. Oldhusband took apart the recording equipment in silence. Mano watched while licking his lolly. Oldhusband quietly thanked Mano for his time and walked out.

Junk and his team left the circle of temples and headed for Everest. With only a few days left to reach the base, everyone was anxious, talkative and ready to begin the ascent. Junk, however, was not. He seemed to the others enraged by the interaction that had taken place at the monastery. We cannot be sure why, but the anger and accompanying silence remained until they reached Base Camp later in the week.

William Hoyt and his team arrived at the northern Base Camp at about the same time Junk was pulling away from the circle of temples. If the ascent was a competition between the two men, Hoyt’s early arrival was perfectly even. The distance between Base Camp and the summit was longer on the north side where Hoyt was climbing, which meant he would get the proper handicap.

The camp lay at the end of the Rongbuk Glacier, just south of the Rongbuk Monastery. The plan was to have all of the Americans – Hoyt, Taylor, Zeigler, Crimmins, Webster, and Fleming – as well as countless Sherpa proceed along the side of the glacier to Camps One, Two, and then Camp Three at the North Col. When the route left the glacier and started to rise dramatically along the Northern Ridge, Hoyt, Taylor, and Zeigler would continue with fifty Sherpa. The rest would remain at Camp Three as back-up. This was a classic example of The Arctic Method, in which the mountain was taken by force. No climber at any altitude would have far to down-climb in order to find safety. Even the highest camp would be decked out with several Sherpa, warm food, and good company. If a summit attempt went awry, the climbers could be sipping scotch and feeling superior within a few hours.

They made excellent progress along the glacier. The weather was fair and the men were in good health. Taylor even summoned the strength to sing along the way. He was a fan of British opera, especially Gilbert and Sullivan. The other climbers were treated to repeated recitals of “The Pirates of Penzance.” It didn’t help that Taylor was slightly inebriated; carrying a flask of Jameson’s everywhere he went. He did not intend to abstain from alcohol until the climbing got truly intense along the Northern Ridge. The musical entertainment did not last long. “I pulled a clump of ice from my crampons and threw it at the soused tenor” Hoyt wrote. “The stinging ice did its work and he became silent.”

At Camp Three, the men who planned to continue struggled with the oxygen supplies. None of them had ever used the new-fangled devices before, and some of the men, especially Zeigler, were somewhat perturbed by the whole idea. It seemed like cheating. Reaching the top of the world, they reasoned, was not a victory if one needed the help of canned air. Crimmins disagreed. If they were so hell-bent on not cheating, then climb to the top shoeless. Weren’t shoes supplemental feet? Leave the jacket behind, for it was merely supplemental skin. Zeigler responded that if Crimmins was to take his argument to its extreme, then they might as well jump from a zeppelin onto the peak. The debate came to an impasse. No one was quite sure what the line was that could not be crossed before one was cheating, except that they all agreed that riding some sort of heated, spike-wheeled contraption to the top would be considered unsportsmanlike. Hoyt just observed from afar. “What the blazes are these men talking about?” he wrote in notes for Wizzy. “They think this is a salon in Vienna. Just put on the oxygen tanks and leave it at that.” Hoyt’s letters to Wizzy would turn out to be the best record of the events to come on their attempt at the summit of Mount Everest.

Aaron Junk’s writings to his girlfriend, on the other hand, were no record at all. They were merely filthy flirtations. “When I return from my attempt at reaching the ‘Third Pole,’ perhaps you can have some fun with the Fourth.” All of the letters had this tone. One has to turn to Twist’s diary to have a good idea of the events that occurred on the south side of the mountain over the next several weeks.

From the rocky, desolate southern Base Camp, Junk’s team ascended and descended between the Khumbu Icefall and Camp One. Junk, Ang Kikuli, and the Europeans would blaze the trail, and then return for the rest of the Sherpa and equipment. The Icefall is not a landscape for the timid. It has the texture of parched earth if one were a small insect, with massive cracks in the ground running in every direction, some of them forty feet wide and one hundred feet deep. Ladders and ropes were set up to cross crevasses. Twist wrote, “When walking
across
a ladder over a one-hundred-foot-deep, forty-foot-wide crevasse, ‘Don’t look down’ takes on a life-or-death immediacy. Climbing up and down the Icefall over and over, one takes that saying and internalizes it so it is no longer consciously repeated to oneself. It becomes part of the inner workings of the Soul. But I have no fear. I look down into the crevasses, and I see smiling angels looking up, their arms out, waiting to catch me. Would they catch the Sherpa if one fell? They do not look like Church of England congregants, so it is unlikely. Perhaps the elephant-headed fellow is down there too, waiting for them, but I cannot see him.” Twist continued, “I think I am badly in need of oxygen.”

It was near the top of the Icefall where they ran into problems. No one could find John Browning. When they awoke in the morning, he was gone along with his camera equipment. He had not told anyone he would be off taking pictures, and it was essential for safety’s sake everyone was accounted for, always. He was also supposed to bring someone along. The team looked around for about an hour. The camp was located within a series of shallow crevasses forming a kind of maze, so everyone needed to be careful not to get lost.

When Browning was found, he was taking pictures of himself naked. Apparently, frotteurism was not his only “hobby.” Browning had misjudged the excursion to Everest, thinking it a time in the vast wilderness where he would have relative seclusion. He had clearly gambled he could get away for a short time to “commune with nature.” But the gamble had failed. Despite the expansive environment, climbing expeditions can be quite claustrophobic, especially back then, with men living on top of each other for months on end. His later explanation to the barristers was that he wanted to make artistic photographs of Man in Nature, in the spirit of the American Thomas Eakins’ paintings of bathers. One barrister wrote, “I do not recall any Thomas Eakins paintings that include a naked man on his back holding his legs in the air.” When the team down-climbed the Icefall as part of the acclimatization process, Browning was sent back to Base Camp with a few Sherpa. He would have to wait there until the expedition was over. Now the team was one man down.

The Sherpa were in an uproar. Browning’s actions were almost guaranteed to offend Chomolungma, goddess of Everest and the surrounding region. Their religion dictated piety on the mountain. There was to be no moral coarseness on an expedition. In the opinion of the Sherpa, what Browning did was the equivalent of slapping a goddess in the face. Now they only had to await her response.

“
There is no air here, Wiz,” William Hoyt wrote. “We are not even past the North Col, and already I feel a great weight upon my chest. Each inhalation is like going through business school again. I cannot imagine how I will feel when we ascend another several thousand feet. I am also afraid. So many men greater than I have sat here before, writing to their loved ones, only to meet icy death hours later. There is no way to know what God will deliver from on high, but I promise you, I will not be lost.”

Hoyt, along with Taylor, Zeigler, and myriad Sherpa left from the North Col to Camp Four early on the morning of August 31st, wearing their breathing apparatuses. The addition of oxygen was bittersweet for the Americans. Now they could breathe easily but they also had to carry heavy tanks on their backs. For the Sherpa, the addition of oxygen was a pure victory. They had to carry fewer tanks and they could breathe easier, Sahibs be damned.

The team was plagued by bad weather almost immediately. Snow and wind bit at them each step of the way, not forceful enough to stop them entirely, but enough to slow them down. The men made it to Camp Four, exhausted and doubtful. When they awoke the next morning to take on more of the Northern Ridge, ten Sherpa said they were through. The weather and their own fatigue had gotten the best of them. Hoyt, in his usual manner, refused to let them leave. Instead of giving them a pep talk, he berated them for their “weakness.” This had the wrong effect. Twenty Sherpa began down-climbing. Taylor also complained of pain in his kidneys but Hoyt would have none of it. He yelled at Taylor, saying he must continue up the mountain until death stopped him.

The three Americans and the thirty remaining Sherpa made their way toward the top of the Northern Ridge and High Camp. At that point, they planned to turn onto the Northeast Ridge which led all the way to the top. That had been the route of the British ascents of the 1920’s. It was by the time of Hoyt a well-established route. But getting to the Northeast Ridge proved difficult. The storm continued to get worse. The wind and snow was coming from the north, leaving them absolutely no protection from its wrath. Hoyt felt his fingers and what was left of his toes go numb. More Sherpa turned back despite Hoyt’s attempts to bark at them through his mask and over the wind. Shortly thereafter, Taylor tapped on Hoyt’s shoulder. “I turned to look and Taylor waved goodbye,” wrote Hoyt. “I ripped off my mask and cursed at him. ‘You are nothing!’ I yelled. ‘I should have invited my mother to come. She would have made it.’ Taylor held up the back of his mitten to me. I can only assume he was giving me the finger. He then walked down the ridge into the storm.”

After many days of negotiating the Khumbu Icefall, Junk’s team made it to the Western Cwm, a relatively gentle climb leading to Camp Two. Despite its lack of technical challenge, the Western Cwm presents its own unique obstacles. One major obstacle is the heat. It catches copious amounts of sunlight during the day, so climbers spend much of their time boiling and dressed down. But Junk’s team was not so lucky. The storm that was simultaneously abusing Hoyt’s team on the north side of the mountain was also wreaking havoc on the southern approach. They had planned to set up Camp Two at the bottom of the Lhotse Face, but the entire team was exhausted. They set up their tents half way up the Western Cwm, nuzzled up against the rocky face that rose to the Western Ridge. The rocks protected them from the full force of the wind, and so there they stayed for two endless, dull days.

When they woke up on the next day, the air was cold and windy, but the sky was a brilliant blue. Junk was ready to go, but Twist hesitated. “I told him the Lhotse Face was a major risk. It had taken the brunt of the storm, and I was concerned an attempt on it today guaranteed an avalanche.”

As its name implies, the Lhotse Face is a rise on another mountain called Lhotse. Lhotse is about two thousand feet shorter than Everest and attached to Everest at her hip. The classic southern Everest route – the one which Junk had planned to take - makes a very steep, straight shot toward the Lhotse summit before turning left and ascending toward the ridge attaching the two mountains. It is along this ridge one reaches the South Col and the Southern Ridge leading to Everest’s summit. Junk agreed with Twist the Lhotse Face looked threatening, covered with a fresh layer of soft snow begging to drop. But now they had to come up with an alternate route. Twist suggested the Western Ridge, up a steep incline off to their left.

Oldhusband implored Twist to forget the idea. From where they stood, the Western Ridge looked serrated like a knife. Oldhusband wrote, “Training the eyes left to right, one saw step after step after step. Sure, the face leading to the Western Ridge did not have the precarious snow of the Lhotse Face, but at least the route from the South Col to the summit was easily visible and looked relatively safe (with the exception of one nasty looking step). What perils awaited us on the Western Ridge? Twist was thinking in a shortsighted manner to say the least.”

The gambler in Junk had awakened. Both options were perilous, but the Lhotse Face was a known quantity, which is always the safer bet. If they were quiet about it, they could ascend the face and be out of harm’s way quickly. But the Western Ridge. There was no way to be sure what it held up its sleeve. From their point of view, they could only see the bumpy ridgeline but little of where it led. Nonetheless, Junk leaned heavily toward the latter option. The risk of avalanche was practically guaranteed with the Lhotse Face, but for all they knew, the Western Ridge was a red carpet to the top of Everest. For a moment, Junk was back on the streets of South Boston and, as usual, he was going for the long shot.

Oldhusband made one last effort to convince the other men to take the Lhotse Face. In desperation, he proposed the team intentionally set off an avalanche. By making a lot of noise they would hopefully trigger an avalanche on the Lhotse Face. Junk was willing to give it one chance.

They started by yelling a lot. All twenty-eight Sherpa were asked to participate. But the groups’ exhausted lungs were not very effective at this altitude. The resulting chorus of “yells” sounded like someone snoring into a trombone. Twist spotted a boulder about twenty feet up the rock face below the Western Ridge that looked as if it could easily be pushed down to the rocky surface below. Perhaps the sound of rock meeting rock would do the trick? He, McSorley, and several Sherpa slowly climbed up to it and began to push. It would not budge. Winded and not wanting to down-climb, McSorley asked for another Sherpa to hike up with a bag of tent poles. They would stick one end of the tent poles under the boulder, set the middle of the poles’ length on top of a smaller rock, and place all of their weight on the other end. Put more plainly, they were going to fashion a see-saw. To make a larger enough space for the men to rest their weight, Oldhusband placed his backpack atop their end of the poles. The men piled on. To their amazement, it worked. The boulder slowly leaned away from them and then quickly dropped over the lip it had long called home.