Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Yet on another outing, Lachenal confessed his limitations to Contamine. “The skin
grafts won't stand up to a prolonged outing,” he said. “On the descent, the ends of my
feet bang against the leather. Ah, Conta! Where are the days when we did the Caïman,
the Croco, and the Peigne in the same day? Where are those days?”
This vignette appears in the 1956
Carnets du Vertige,
and it exemplifies an acute
biographical problem. The chief source for Lachenal's life after 1950 is that book,
which—apart from the heavily censored Annapurna diary—is composed of third-per-
son chapters written by Gérard Herzog. These passages are based on Lachenal's notes,
and on further notes composed by a journalist, Philippe Cornuau, whom Lachenal en-
listed to help him with his book. For the most part, Gérard Herzog's chapters follow the
chief themes of Lachenal's life post-Annapurna, as corroborated by still-living friends.
Yet, as in
Annapurna,
the
Carnets
abounds in invented dialogue. And it paints a por-
trait of Lachenal that blunts his arch-critical candor, his acerbic wit. There is a soften-
ing Herzog stamp throughout.
Nowhere is the 1956
Carnets
more unreliable than in its account of Lachenal's re-
lations with Maurice Herzog after 1950. Thus Gérard has Lachenal hear of Maurice's
plans to plunge, despite his amputations, back into alpinism with an ascent of the Mat-
terhorn in 1952. “The obsession with being unequal to his ambitions,” writes Gérard,
“made [Lachenal] turn down the chance to share this experience, despite Herzog's ad-
vances.” (Nothing came of Herzog's Matterhorn plans.)
More unctuously, Gérard paints Lachenal responding to a friend's entreaties to take
up skiing again on an easy slope. “My feet are messed up,” complains Lachenal. “I
would make a fool of myself.” Then he learns that Herzog is about to try to ski again,
and that he hopes Lachenal will join him in the effort. Suddenly Lachenal changes his
mind. “Ah! With Maurice,” Gérard quotes him, “that would be really great.”
Lachenal was devoted to his two sons, and to Adèle, but he may also have been
something of a ladies' man. According to Mauricette Couttet, Lachenal found that his
crippled state could charm women: “He had a different approach with young ladies
[after Annapurna]. He was allowed things afterward that he wasn't before.” Says
Payot's sister, Elisabeth, “He was a wonderful friend, but an odious husband. He either
did all the housework, or emptied all the drawers and said to Adèle, You clean all this
up.”
By 1953, Lachenal had become ambitious in the mountains. That year, with
Rébuffat, Payot, Contamine, and two other friends, he pulled off an extraordinary as-
cent of the south ridge of the Aiguille Noire de Peuterey, a long and serious route in
the same class as the northeast face of the Piz Badile (one of Rébuffat's six great north
faces). Though Contamine led most of the pitches on Lachenal's rope, the very fact that
