Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
T
HUS THE FIRST CONQUEST
of an 8,000-meter peak began to take its toll on the victors. In
his trance, Herzog forgot all about the spare pair of socks in his pack, which he could
have used as gloves: instead, he descended barehanded. The two men regained Camp
V only just before dark, in the middle an all-out storm that severely reduced their vis-
ibility. Lachenal had slipped and fallen past the tent before scrambling back up to the
shelter. Left to their own devices, Herzog and Lachenal would probably have perished
there. But during the day, Rébuffat and Terray had climbed to Camp V, hoping for their
own summit push on the morrow. As Terray seized Herzog's hands to wring them in
congratulation, he was struck with horror. “Maurice—your hands!” he cried out.
“There was an uneasy silence,” Herzog later recalled. “I had forgotten that I had
lost my gloves: my fingers were violet and white and hard as wood. The other two
stared at them in dismay.”
Forgoing their own chance for the summit, Terray and Rébuffat stayed up all night
brewing hot drinks for their comrades and whipping Lachenal's bare toes and Herzog's
toes and fingers with rope ends, in an effort to restore circulation. (Because of the dam-
age it does to frozen tissue and cells, the treatment is now known to cause more harm
than help.)
The next day, as the storm increased its fury, the four men staggered down toward
Camp IVA, just above the ice cliff of the Sickle. But in the lashing whiteout they lost
their way. With dusk approaching, carrying no tent and but one sleeping bag among
the four of them, the men circled helplessly looking for a familiar landmark. A night
without shelter would undoubtedly prove fatal.
Then Lachenal broke through a snow bridge and plunged into a hidden crevasse.
The mishap turned into salvation. Unhurt, Lachenal called out to the others to join
him. The snow ledge at the bottom of the crevasse would serve for an emergency biv-
ouac.
Huddled together for warmth, shivering against the snow that relentlessly filtered
into their clothes, rubbing each other's feet to ward off further frostbite, the four men
spent as miserable a night as mountaineers have ever endured in the Himalaya. After
two nights in a row without sleep, Herzog and Lachenal had neared the end of their
endurance. In the morning, Rébuffat was the first to poke his head out of the crevasse.
Terray anxiously inquired about the weather. “Can't see a thing,” Rébuffat answered.
“It's blowing hard.”
But after Lachenal thrashed his way to the surface, in Herzog's words, “he began to
run like a madman, shrieking, 'It's fine, it's fine!' ” The day before, trying to find the
route down, Terray and Rébuffat had removed their goggles. Despite the storm that
smothered them, at an altitude above 24,000 feet the sun's ultraviolet rays had pen-
