True Summit (31 page)

Yet in the next breath, Lachenal takes issue with his portrait in
Annapurna
. For five years, he knew, he had been “consistently depicted as badly affected by the altitude, by the final struggle, and especially by the fall that I took in the vicinity of Camp V.” Herzog,
Lachenal complains, had implied “that I no longer knew what I was doing.” Yet his cries for help, which Terray heard and which guided him to his fallen friend's side, and before that his instinct to plunge his gloveless hands into his pack to save them, were both, Lachenal insists, the reflexes of a sane man doing what he had to do to survive—not the hysterical responses of a climber driven half mad by his ordeal. As for Herzog's vignette of Lachenal trying to seize Terray's axe to descend alone to Camp II—Lachenal denies this ever took place.

Yet none of these discrepancies matter, continues Lachenal, because the descent became a multiplying sequence of errors and desperate acts. As the four men had stumbled lost through the fog late on the afternoon of June 4, Herzog saw Lachenal's behavior as proof of his dementia: “Perhaps he was not quite in his right mind. He said it was no use going on; we must dig a hole in the snow and wait for fine weather. He swore at Terray.” Now Lachenal reclaims his exhortation at that grim moment as “not the counsel of an unbalanced man, but of a sane one.”

We were all sorely tried by the altitude—as I said, this was normal. Herzog noted as much about himself. Beyond that, however, he was illuminated. Marching toward the summit, he had the sense of fulfilling a mission, and I truly believe he thought of St. Theresa of Avila on the summit. As for me, I wanted above all else to go down, and that is exactly why I believe I kept my head on my shoulders.

At last, Lachenal turns to the pivot point below the summit, when he had raised the possibility of descending rather than pushing on toward the top. It is worth putting that decision in historical perspective.

Three years after Annapurna, the talented and driven Austrian climber Hermann Buhl would reach the summit of Nanga Parbat alone. On the only 8,000-meter peak whose first ascent was a solo achievement, Buhl won his lasting glory and fame, at the cost, like Herzog and Lachenal, of losing all his toes to frostbite.

In the decades since that Golden Age of Himalayan mountaineering, however, some of the strongest climbers in the world
have perished as they pushed beyond their limits trying to reach 8,000-meter summits. Along the way, an inordinate number have lapsed into trance states not unlike Herzog's. In 1996, for instance, during the memorable Everest disaster, both immensely experienced chief guides, Scott Fischer and Rob Hall, drifted into apathetic stupors from which even the frantic entreaties of their teammates (in Hall's case, over the radio) could not in the end budge them. The pull of the summit, intersecting with the fog of hypoxic trance, cost them their lives.

In this context, mountaineers have learned to reserve their highest praise for peers who have had the guts to turn back even as close as a hundred yards below the summit. Reinhold Messner, the finest high-altitude mountaineer of all time, the first man to climb all fourteen 8,000-meter peaks, survived this most dangerous game by more than once heeding the mountain's warning and turning back.

It was in such a state that Lachenal alone, on June 3, 1950, recognized the consequences of his pivotal decision. In his “Commentaires,” he writes plainly, “I knew that my feet were freezing, that the summit would cost me them.” (In the margin of the typescript, Devies ranted, “Between simply feeling cold and freezing, there is a difference. Lachenal never told me this story.”)

In the last analysis, at this critical juncture, it was Herzog who miscalculated. It was he who mistakenly thought his feet would “come back” from temporary numbness, he who loitered in bliss on the summit when every minute squandered narrowed the two men's margin of safety, he who dropped his gloves on the descent. Though Himalayan history would have been radically altered, though there would have been no
Annapurna
, had Lachenal's canny judgment prevailed at the moment he proposed giving up the summit, the French team would have probably returned from the mountain intact and safe, after another gallant failure in the quest to reach the summit of the first 8,000-meter peak. Lachenal's instinct to turn around, with the summit tantalizingly close, was the right one.

“For me,” continues Lachenal in his “Commentaires,” “this climb was only a climb like others, higher than in the Alps but no
more important. If I was going to lose my feet, I didn't give a damn about Annapurna. I didn't owe my feet to the Youth of France.”

And so, why continue toward the summit?

Thus I wanted to go down. I posed the question to Maurice to find out what he would do in that case. He told me he would keep going. I didn't need to judge his reasons: alpinism is too personal a business. But I guessed that if he continued alone, he would not return. It was for him and for him alone that I did not turn around.

Reading this passage in the typescript of the
Carnets
, Herzog was given pause. Instead of annotating the remark with the kind of marginal criticism he had indulged in on page after preceding page, he wrote poignantly, “I didn't sense this. Perhaps after all I was unfair.” But Lucien Devies was unimpressed, scribbling, “C'est entièrement à revoir”—“This must all be rewritten.” In the end, of course, Gérard Herzog suppressed the “Commentaires” altogether.

N
O ONE EVER QUESTIONED
Herzog's courage or perseverance. On Annapurna, whatever his faults, he never led from the rear. Without his ultimate effort, no one would have reached the summit in 1950. Nor does anyone doubt that
Annapurna
is a stirring, even a sublime narrative of bravery, endurance, and teamwork.

That Herzog's tale turns out not to be the whole truth of Annapurna in no way undercuts the fundamental heroism of its protagonists. The more we learn, from all the warring viewpoints, about what happened on that brilliant and tragic expedition, the more the loyalty and self-sacrifice of Terray and Rébuffat shine forth. Terray, in particular, played an extraordinary role: the strongest climber, he twice gave up his chance for the summit, and after only a brief hesitation he traded boots with Lachenal, risking frostbite to enable his best friend to stagger down the mountain.

When all is said and done, moreover, is there any deed in all of mountaineering history more noble than Lachenal's? For as he pushed on toward the elusive summit that bitter day in June, he
knew quite clearly that he was sacrificing his feet to save his comrade's life.

With all the laconic eloquence of his writing at its best, he closes his “Commentaires” with a condensed statement of his truth. If there can never be a definitive last word on the complex and ambiguous saga that was Annapurna 1950, still, Lachenal's two sentences stand as its epigraph: “That march to the summit was not a matter of national glory. It was
une affaire de cordée.”

Also by David Roberts

A Newer World: Kit Carson, John C. Frémont, and the Claiming of the American West

The Lost Explorer: Finding Mallory on Mount Everest
(with Conrad Anker)

Escape Routes: Further Adventure Writings of David Roberts

In Search of the Old Ones: Exploring the Anasazi World of the Southwest

Once They Moved Like the Wind: Cochise, Geronimo, and the Apache Wars

Mt. McKinley: The Conquest of Denali
(with Bradford Washburn)

Iceland: Land of the Sagas
(with Jon Krakauer)

Jean Stafford: A Biography

Moments of Doubt: And Other Mountaineering Writings

Great Exploration Hoaxes

Deborah: A Wilderness Narrative

The Mountain of My Fear

T
HE BEST-SELLING
mountaineering book of all time, Maurice Herzog's
Annapurna
was first published in France by Editions Arthaud in 1951, in the United States by E. P. Dutton & Co. the year after. It is currently in print in the U.S. in a Lyons Press edition. Herzog's 1998 memoir,
L'Autre Annapurna
(Editions Robert Laffont), has not yet appeared in English.

Louis Lachenal's heavily expurgated
Carnets du Vertige
was first published in 1956 by Pierre Horay. The 1996 publication in a deluxe edition by Editions Guérin restores all the suppressed passages. The book has never been published in English.

Lionel Terray's admirable autobiography,
Les Conquérants de l'Inutile,
was first published by Editions Gallimard in 1961, then republished, also in a deluxe edition, by Editions Guérin in 1995. Translated into English as
Conquistadors of the Useless,
the book appeared in the United Kingdom in 1963 (Victor Gollancz, Ltd.) but is now out of print. A new English-language edition, however, is being jointly planned by Chessler Books in the U.S. and Baton Wicks Publications in the U.K. Terray's account
of his 1964 first ascent of Mount Huntington in Alaska appeared in
The American Alpine Journal
for 1965.

Yves Ballu's biography,
Gaston Rébuffat: Une Vie pour la Montagne,
was published in 1996 by Editions Hoëbeke. It has not appeared in English. Rébuffat's masterly
Etoiles et Tempêtes
was published by Editions Arthaud in 1954, and in English, as
Starlight and Storm,
in 1957 (E. P. Dutton & Co.). Though that edition is now out of print, the book was republished in 1999 by The Modern Library.

Tom Patey's hilarious essay critiquing Rébuffat (“Apes or Ballerinas?”) and his wicked ballad, “Annapurna,” both appear in
One Man's Mountains
(Victor Gollancz, Ltd., 1973), currently in print in the U.S. in an edition by The Mountaineers Books. The Bernard George film on Annapurna, titled
Annapurna: L'Histoire d'une Legende,
aired in 1999 and is available in France on cassette.

The most important articles that appeared during and after the 1996 controversy were “Annapurna: L'Autre Verité,” by Christophe Raylat, in
Montagnes
(December 1996); “La Conquête de l'Annapurna ‘retouchée' par les guides Lachenal et Rébuffat,” by Claude Francillon, in
Le Monde
(November 8, 1996); “Annapurna Premier 8,000,” by Claude Deck, in
La Montagne et Alpinisme
(January 1997); “Sous le chapiteau vertical des guides de haute montagne,” by Frédéric Potet, in
Dimanche 8
(December 9, 1996); “Annapurna, premier 8000 et sommet de désinformation,” by Charlie Buffet, in
Libération
(November 25, 1996); “Le temps de la pose,” by Jean-Michel Asselin, in
Vertical
(May 1998); and “Herzog: 80 ans et mille questions,” by Benoît Heimermann, in
L'Equipe
(January 16, 1999). Herzog's letter to
Le Monde
appeared on November 13, 1996; Françoise Rébuffat's rejoinder on November 27.

I was disappointed, at the last minute, to be denied permission by Editions Robert Laffont to quote from
L'Autre Annapurna
at greater length than is covered by fair use, and to be denied, by the estate of Marcel Ichac, the chance to reproduce any of his photos from the expedition. In addition, Maurice Herzog refused to respond to my request for permission to reprint his summit photo of Lachenal.

M
Y PRIMARY DEBT
in writing this book is to my French publisher, Michel Guérin, who not only rescued Lachenal's diary from oblivion but who first whispered in my ear that Annapurna 1950 was not exactly what Herzog had written. In the course of my researches, Michel became a fellow sleuth. He also opened doors for me all over France. In almost forty years of climbing, I have never met an alpinist with a surer grasp of the history and culture of our pastime than Michel, nor a cannier analyst of its ambiguities. By publishing my book in France, Michel puts himself in the potentially awkward situation of becoming a character in a book that
appears under his imprint. I hope he can rest easy in that spot, for this is how it must be—there would have been no book without him.

Second only to Michel in the roster of my gratitude is Linda Dubosson,
le bon soldat.
Thoroughly bilingual, a keen student of language in all its nuances, she helped me through a number of interviews with sources whose spoken French, for one reason or another, veered into arcane pathways where I found myself completely lost. In the writing, Linda saved me from many a translating blunder. And her year-long enthusiasm for the project, her willingness to drop everything to answer my latest anxious query, served me immensely.

All the staff at Editions Guérin, and in particular Sylvie Monfleur and Catherine Cuenot, have been unfailingly helpful to me, as has Michel's wife, Marie-Christine, my sage and genial hostess on three happy trips to Chamonix. In Paris, my longtime friend Marie-France Moisi solved many knotty puzzles of language and meaning, and transcribed Françoise Rébuffat's reading of crucial passages of her late husband's otherwise indecipherable handwriting.

Many people in France who had various links to the Annapurna principals gave generously of their time, their memories, and their opinions. Particularly valuable were the testimonies of Jean-Claude Lachenal, Marianne Terray, Françoise Rébuffat, and Maurice Herzog. Also greatly useful were the reflections of Jean-Pierre Payot, Elisabeth Payot, Leonce Fourès, Philippe Cornuau, Lise Couzy, Mauricette Couttet, Antoine Terray, Jean-Claude Ichac, Michel Chevalier, Bernard George, Deborah Ford, Charlie Buffet, Benoît Heimermann, Yves Ballu, and Jean-Michel Asselin.