Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Despite the fact that only one member—cinematographer Marcel Ichac, a veteran of
Gasherbrum I—had ever been to the Himalaya before, the 1950 Annapurna expedition
comprised as strong a party as had ever been put in the field in Asia. Herzog himself
was an accomplished mountaineer, with a number of daring climbs in the Alps under
his belt. The two junior members, Marcel Schatz and Jean Couzy, showed great prom-
ise (Couzy would go on to rack up a roster of first ascents equaled by only a handful of
his contemporaries).
But the heart of the Annapurna expedition—its core of competence so assured as
to verge on genius—lay in Lachenal and his two fellow Chamonix guides, Lionel Ter-
ray and Gaston Rébuffat. Throughout the 1940s, even during wartime, these men had
pulled off one blazing ascent in the Alps after another. By 1950, they were unquestion-
ably the three finest mountaineers in France, rivaled in the rest of the world only by
a handful of German, Italian, and Austrian peers (no American or Briton was even in
their league).
Yet through most of April and May 1950, as the team wandered aimlessly trying to
sort out the topography and find its way toward 26,493-foot Annapurna, the expedi-
tion threatened to collapse into utter fiasco. With the solving of the Miristi Khola, all
the expertise embodied in the team's six principal climbers came to the fore. The choice
of which pair would make the summit bid had seemed to depend as much as anything
on the luck of who happened to reach the right camp on the right day. That luck put
Lachenal and Herzog in Camp V on the morning of June 3.
Now, well above 25,000 feet, sometime after noon, the pair traversed toward the
right beneath a final rock band that blocked the way to the summit. Suddenly Herzog
pointed, uttering a single word: “Couloir!”
“What luck!” rejoined Lachenal. In front of the men, a steep snow gully angled up
through the rock band.
“Let's go, then!” Herzog urged, and Lachenal signaled agreement. “I had lost all
track of time,” Herzog later recalled. Facing the couloir, he felt a moment of doubt:
“Should we have enough strength left to overcome this final obstacle?” Kicking steps
in the hard snow, their crampon points biting well, the men trudged upward.
Herzog later described those climactic moments:
A slight detour to the left, a few more steps—the summit ridge came gradually nearer—a
few rocks to avoid. We dragged ourselves up. Could we possibly be there? . . .
Yes! A fierce and savage wind tore at us.
We were on top of Annapurna! 8,075 meters. . . .
Our hearts overflowed with an unspeakable happiness.
“If only the others could know . . .”
