Hell Is Above Us: The Epic Race to the Top of Fumu, the World's Tallest Mountain (34 page)

The Gurkha thrust his kukri at Phurbu Tawa’s chest, but the rascally Sherpa changed his stance only slightly thereby averting the blow. The Gurkha’s arm now extended, Phurbu Tawa grabbed and twisted, quickly forcing the Gurkha to roll up with his arm behind him. Phurbu Tawa then dug his fingers in between the bones on the top of the Gurkha’s hand, forcing him to drop the kukri. Phurbu Tawa had not even started using his left hand yet. Now was the time. He used the free hand to grab the falling kukri and hold it to the Gurkhas back. Finally, Phurbu Tawa let go of the Gurkha’s hand and pulled the snake’s head around back and pulled. Knife in back and neck constrained, the Gurkha stopped moving. A gagging sound emanated from his mouth.

“
Putting a snake around your neck was not a good uniform decision” Phurbu Tawa jested quite casually. “Did you also consider wearing a codpiece full of gunpowder?” The eight other “Nepalese Cobras” edged forward. “Don’t come any closer or I put this sword through him! I know Gurkhas are trained in hand to hand combat, but I too have learned how to fight, passing through a countryside teeming with dacoits each time I return from porting. The same goes for many of my friends in attendance. Tonight you chose to threaten the wrong people. Now walk and do not return or so help me, I will injure you so terribly that you will think your great Akapura lumbered away and the Earth dropped into infinite darkness.”

Phurbu Tawa let go of the cobra and the gagging sound ceased. The lead stranger massaged his neck as if that would cure the pain ringing it. He began to walk away from Phurbu Tawa and toward his fellow “soldiers,” a look of shame on his face.

“
Your wife. Your child.” The stranger uttered in a hoarse voice.

“
What did you say?”

The stranger looked back and pointed at the two people of which he spoke. “Your wife. Your child. I have remembered their faces. We will return and we will kill them in the night.”

The threat caused Phurbu Tawa to explode. Yelling, he burst forward, closing the distance between himself and the stranger in less than candlelight takes to be blown out. The stranger turned toward the yell just in time for the crooked sword to enter his belly. He did not scream as much as expel all of the air in his lungs in a voiced manner. The expelling of air was followed by blood trickling down his chin, slowly at first, then in a swollen river. Chhiri Tendi remembers that although large amounts of blood came from the man’s mouth, almost none exited the hole in his stomach which still sheathed the kukri. The stranger dropped to the floor, made some unpleasant gurgling noises, kicked his leg several times, and then ceased to move.

A few cries came from the women in the room, but after that a dreadful silence fell again. Phurbu Tawa looked down at the body in horror. This was not a look the others had seen on his face before. He did not wear it well.

The other eight Gurkhas looked around the room at the now standing crowd. The one on the far left walked forward and pointed his kukri at Phurbu Tawa. “This is not over. We can wait decades for revenge!” he hissed. The remaining Cobras turned on their heels and marched out into the frigid night. Snow blew in as they walked out. The last man in the line got his snake caught in the door on the way out. Robbing the cobras of their dramatic exit, the man opened the door again to pull the snake free.

The Sherpa all looked down at the dead man and the growing pool of blood. This type of violence was unusual for them. They were accustomed to the occasional row between inebriated neighbors fighting over women, but those fights usually ended with hugs and slaps on the back. Tonight was quite different. The owners of the home rushed forward after a few moments to clean up the body and prepare it for a funeral. The rest of the partygoers mumbled to one another and began to leave. Phurbu Tawa was without words and he wore an expression of perplexity on his face. How could this have happened? His life had been about peace. Was the threatening of his family justification for going against his core beliefs like this?

Phurbu Tawa was a changed man after the episode. He drank to excess. He did not work as often, forcing Chhiri Tendi to begin porting at an early age. Sometimes at night, when Chhiri Tendi would toss and turn awaiting sleep’s gentle kiss on the forehead, he would hear his father crying in the dark. His mother would scold his father, telling him to be a man, to stop weeping, to go to sleep. “What kind of man am I?” Phurbu Tawa would respond. “I’ve killed a person in cold blood! I can be a man if I stop crying, but a terrible man. That is not much of a reason to stop.”

Shortly thereafter, in rapid succession, both of Chhiri Tendi’s parents died. With his mother it was due to natural causes. She was milking a yak and fell over dead. Chhiri Tendi’s heart fell from a great height at the loss. His father died four months later. Walking home from a neighbor’s after a bout of drinking, he was attacked in the night. He had a knife wound in his gut. Around his neck was a dead, stuffed cobra. A note was found inside his shirt. I questioned Chhiri Tendi’s translation of the note from the original Nepalese because it is a doltish sentiment conveying little sense, but Chhiri Tendi claims the translation is perfect: “The Nepalese Cobras
are
fear.” Likely, the authors meant to suggest they were the personification of terror and caused fear, not that they were the personification of fear. Whatever the point, the message was left on Chhiri Tendi’s father.

Chhiri Tendi wanted nothing more than to exact brutal revenge for the murder of his father, but he also knew that in the exacting, he would become the thing he, his father, and his people reviled. Perhaps some day he could serve justice to these thick-witted revolutionaries. That “some day” would likely be when the Cobras returned to kill him. Yes, he would avenge his father at that time, but he would be sure not to draw blood in the process.

Chapter Twelve: A Team Divided

Hoyt climbed step by labored step up the awful scree. He kept looking back at his fellow climbers, quite certain one of them would falter soon. The weather was unbearable. Wind and snow pelted the team like enemy fire. The annual monsoon was not yet finished with its unbridled abuse of Asia, and Hoyt’s team was feeling the extent of it now on the southern side of Fumu, even if the northern side remained in full, glorious sunlight. It had been overcast but otherwise pleasant when they set out from Base Camp. Then after three hours on the mountain the sky opened up and loosed its wrath.

The pairing of weather and terrain was dreadful. The scree was notorious for its “giving” character, offering up boulders as gifts for the inattentive. Most individuals who brave the scree receive these gifts in a manner fatal; some decapitated, others taken for a ride back down to Base Camp. Now with the visibility at nearly zero, rocks could be heard coming, but could not be seen until they were immediately in front of the victim. “We hear the giant ‘bang bang’ of a boulder rolling down the hill,” wrote Hoyt. “The sound gets louder and louder, but we see nothing. Then it materializes in front us, the size of a damned elephant. It goes barreling past us and disappears, back into the whiteness. Then it happens again a minute or so later, and then again. Some of them are close enough to touch. Not easy to keep calm given the situation.” The team had even decided not to tie off to one another. God forbid a boulder should catch a rope and pull several men down instead of one. Hoyt felt if they made it to the planned location of Camp One at the top of the scree without losing a man and turning tail, it would be a bloody miracle.

One thing was certain. As planned, acclimatization would indeed not involve the scree. Once they were up, they would stay up until they were done with their expedition. The falling rocks and lack of footholds made climbing too risky. Chhiri Tendi had agreed with this plan, as had the other more experienced climbers on his expedition, Drake, Wilde, and Thornton. They would set up Camp One at the top of the scree and begin acclimatization there.

And still more rocks came rolling down the scree.

Hoyt climbed in front, likely still smarting from the loss of a brother and separation from his wife, neither of which he had time to ponder at this moment. He had also stopped writing about these topics in his journal. By the time they were ascending Fumu, it seemed his tone was actually becoming softer intermittently, the sharp splintery edges occasionally sanded away. He wrote sympathetic words about those around him – even feeling sorry for Chatham after the violence in the cave at one point, and then swinging back to vitriolic words condemning Chatham: “He is as unpleasant as sand in the teeth and his handiwork with falsehoods is almost mesmerizing. If lies could be considered a form of wordplay, then Chatham is the Shakespeare of our time.” He wrote kind words about the young climbers, Thornton and Ferguson, lauding them for reliability far exceeding their ages. He would then say they were mere children who knew nothing yet acted like they owned the world. Hoyt still had no good words to say about Yuudai. And there was one topic still capable of bringing about the old Hoyt ire fully formed and unrepentant: “I dreamt last night I found Junk alive but lying on the mountain,” Hoyt wrote. “I started kicking him repeatedly and he did not try to get up or fight back. I simply delighted in kicking him like a child delights in playing with a scab. But with every kick, I felt the pain. And I continued to kick anyway.” In his writings, Hoyt was certain Junk was making better progress due to optimal weather conditions and an easier route. It was September first, the same day Junk was beginning his first ascent up the Rakhiot Glacier. The two men were actually in a tie.

More rocks came rolling down the scree.

Chatham was not deterred by the weather, nor by his third-degree burns, nor by the contusions on his head he sustained from the yak in the cave. He continued to prattle on to those near him on the slope about potentially made-up exploits in exotic destinations. This time it was a narrow escape from premature burial in the Great Pyramid of Khufu. “He says his escape came down to teeth” Thornton wrote in his notes. He claimed he was rescued by his top left incisor, which had come out during an accident opening a hidden sarcophagus in the lower chamber. When he saw the exit of the pyramid closing on them, likely due to tampering by angry locals, he allegedly had the clarity of mind to throw the tooth under the rock. The little space made by the tooth between the door and the bottom of the entrance was enough for them to jam a piece of their equipment in and lift the door. “I am quite confident that story never happened” Hoyt wrote. “The man’s stories are mere flights of fancy. In addition, his climbing abilities are mediocre at best. He is too slow. In sum, Mr. Chatham has offered nothing to this endeavor, save the hot air he expels.”

More rocks.

Yuudai climbed near the back with Chhiri Tendi. All of the American expedition members remained adversarial toward the quiet Japanese fellow. Wilde would berate him for taking too long to organize his pack before leaving camp, a crime that would have gone undetected had it been any other person. Both Wilde and Chatham bumped into him whenever they overtook him on the way up and also when they sauntered by him in camp. He was doing a smashing job of climbing and not getting in the way of others, so no one could find fault with him there. But no matter what he did, he remained the son of the man who had killed Hoyt’s brother and a citizen of a nation at odds with the United States. William Hoyt was not of the school that believes camaraderie is essential to a climbing expedition. Only allegiance to the leader and skill were required. He did not intervene in the overt animosity toward Yuudai, but based on his journal entries he clearly detested the man.

Possibly sensing he could do nothing to change the situation, Yuudai climbed in silence, read books, smoked cigarettes, and said nothing. He preferred to stay near Chhiri Tendi and the other Sherpa because they held no grudge against him. To the Sherpa, Yuudai was just another member of the team. They were not necessarily friendly to him, but they were not cruel to him either.

Rocks rolled by them, too close for comfort.

Everyone was feeling the effects of the brutish weather. Wind howled, making a concerted effort to knock them down. Snow whipped sideways. Chhiri Tendi was already experiencing frostbite on the fingers of his left hand. Hoyt had a touch on his forehead and nose, and his amputated toe’s stump stung him no end. The wind and blindness slowed down their progress. It would be well after dinner by the time they made it up the scree, even though they had started the climb before sunrise. And that time of arrival assumed they could even make it up the scree. The odds seemed low.

An absolutely giant boulder was heard cracking free of its supporting earth and coming loose up ahead. It banged and rolled and banged again. It was coming closer. The dark outline of it was seen barreling toward them mere seconds before it arrived, easily twenty feet in diameter and moving at the speed of a freight train. The men did not have time to yell or to ponder their pending flatness. It was upon them.

And then just as suddenly as it had appeared, the boulder was compromised by a smaller (but certainly not small) boulder in its way. The big one cracked and turned west. One small remnant of it, the size of a musket, continued to move forward. It bounced at Wilde who reflexively ducked, resulting in the rock hitting Chatham square in the mouth. The man was immediately taken off of his feet. He rolled down the incline several yards and came to rest face down. He was moaning. When turned over by Yuudai, he was all gums and blood. “So much for your heroic teeth” yelled Hoyt down to him. He could not help himself. Wilde laughed out loud. He could not help himself either. Soon more of the Americans were laughing out of pure
schadenfreude
. Ferguson. Drake. Even Chatham himself, possibly in shock, began to laugh. “I was not laughing” Hoyt wrote. “I did not mean it as a joke but as a cutting remark. I am not what one might call ‘funny.’” The old nasty Hoyt was apparently still there even if he was given to moments of sentimentality heretofore unseen. He had also surrounded himself with an expedition of individuals who were either just as nasty as him or had taken on his nastiness due to proximity to him. The usual camaraderie one finds in an expedition was not present here. Not at all. The laughter continued in the dead whiteness. Yuudai and the Sherpa looked on.