Travel Reference
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fierce as Patey, a debunker of all things false and sentimental, I would have been as-
tonished. But Rébuffat guarded that side of himself in hermetic privacy. Only a decade
after his death would that well-hidden critic emerge, in his hitherto unpublished notes
and jottings on the 1950 expedition. The man whom the crowds at Orly and in the
Salle Pleyel wished to salute as one of the heroes of Annapurna would become instead
its ultimate skeptic.
A
FTER THE FIVE-YEAR INTERDICTION
against writing about the expedition had expired in
1955, Rébuffat toyed with the idea of publishing his own account of Annapurna. “I
talked him out of writing this,” Françoise told me, “because it would be too bitter.” She
was guided, as well, by simple pragmatism. The reputation of the man who, by virtue
of his poetic celebrations of the mountain world, had become the most famous guide
in France would not be well served by a polemic from his hand undercutting the most
sacred myth in French mountaineering.
So Rébuffat kept the bitterness to himself. In 1981, Herzog published a book called
Les Grandes Aventures de I'Himalaya,
a collection of accounts of other people's exped-
itions. One chapter, called “Un Autre Regard” (“Another Look”), serves as Herzog's
own meditation on Annapurna, three decades later. More personal than
Annapurna,
the chapter stands as a kind of first draft of the “subjective” account of the famous as-
cent that Herzog would publish in
L'Autre Annapurna.
In the seclusion of his study, Rébuffat opened his copy of
Les Grandes Aventures
and scribbled marginal comments throughout the text of “Un Autre Regard.” I first
saw this remarkable document in Yves Ballu's house near Grenoble in 1999.
Rébuffat is plainly disgusted with Herzog's self-preoccupation. Sometimes he
circles key words, then draws lines between them, creating a branching tree of em-
phasis. In the paragraph beginning, “Yes, there we were on June 3, 1950,” Rébuffat
has highlighted “we,” “my [feet],” “I was [the first],” “Around me,” “I spoke to
the 8,000-ers” that “surrounded me.” He has also circled the words “victory” and
“conquered.” In the margin he notes simply, “And Lachenal?”
Above another paragraph, Rébuffat scrawls “Blah-blah-blah!” Beside yet another,
“This is stupid.” Beside another, “A fairy tale.”
The annotations add up to an extended rant against the leader to whom, three dec-
ades earlier, Rébuffat had been forced to pledge total obedience. Another branching
tree, covering more than two pages, links Herzog's professions of fear of death and
frozen flesh: “My carcass was transformed into ice,” “would cost me my life,” “lost
consciousness,” “die in battle,” “capitulate,” “out of breath.” Beside one section of this
text, Rébuffat writes, “
Quel cinéma!
[What a comedian!]”
