Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
It seemed to me at that moment [of Lachenal's and Herzog's return from the summit] that
Terray and I were charged with a mission that, in my innermost heart, pleased me more
than going to the top, because it converged with what I love about my métier as guide: to
taste renunciation in the name of friendship and to negotiate with the storm to save my
companions.
I have never liked those martial terms so often applied to the mountain: “The Himalayan
assault,” “the conquest of . . .” Least of all, so often employed, “Victory over Annapurna.” I
have never considered myself a victor over Annapurna.
Oh, if only Herzog had lost his flags instead of his gloves, how happy I would have been!
R
ÉBUFFAT CONTINUED
to climb into his fifties. In 1975, at the age of fifty-four, he made a
remarkable ascent of the Freney Pillar, one of Mont Blanc's hardest and most extended
routes.
That same year, he was diagnosed with cancer of the breast. There followed a decade
of hope and despair, of radio- and chemotherapy, of brief remissions followed by more
serious onsets, as the cancer slowly worked its ravages. By now, Gaston and Françoise
had three children. As the children grew Rébuffat had taken them up classic routes in
his enchanted garden.
Refusing to give in to his ailment, the tall guide made two more major climbs: the
first ascent of the southeast face of the Aiguille du Plan, in 1979, and—by now ser-
iously debilitated—the south face of the Aiguille du Midi in 1983, of which he had
made the first ascent twenty-seven years earlier. After the latter climb, Rébuffat jotted
a laconic entry in the guide's notebook he had kept all his life: “August 18. South face
of Aiguille du Midi. Start at 9:00. Summit 15:00. Great fatigue.”
Two years before he died, Rébuffat fulfilled a lifelong dream by rafting the Colorado
River with Françoise, signing up for a commercial trip. “He was very tired, just out
of chemotherapy,” she told me. “There were clients of all ages on the river. They
quickly saw that Gaston was very sick. Very discreetly the other clients started to do
everything for him. To get in and out of the boat, he needed help. Two young Germans
found the best campsites for him.”
Did these companions realize who Rébuffat was, I wondered. Did they know what
this man had done in the mountains in his prime?
“No,” said Françoise. “All they knew was that he was French, and that he was very
sick.”
A year after Gaston's death, Françoise began to write a memoir about her life with
her husband. Still unfinished, never published, it nonetheless contains passages of
