Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Lachenal could complete such a climb was proof that his genius had not altogether left
him.
Lachenal threw himself back into the mountains. In 1954, he was involved in a har-
rowing catastrophe, when a group of beginners he was leading got bombarded with
tons of falling rock as they descended the Aiguille Verte. Lachenal's fellow guide, Alex-
is Simond, was killed beside him, and one of the beginners gravely injured. Yet even
this memento mori failed to dampen Lachenal's enthusiasm.
In the summer of 1955, Lachenal agreed to climb Monte Rosa (at 15,217 feet, the
second-highest peak in the Alps) with Herzog. In the 1956
Carnets,
Gérard Herzog
claims the idea was Lachenal's:
Already in 1954 Lachenal had wanted to make a good climb with his companion from An-
napurna. Then the circumstances had not been right; but now Herzog was in Chamonix, the
weather seemed stable and fine, the moment had come. For both of them, this project had a
great emotional significance.
Jean-Claude Lachenal remembers the “project” quite differently: “Herzog wanted
the press along. My father said no, not with any publicity.”
After the climb, Lachenal wrote an account of it. This too was suppressed by Devies
and Gérard Herzog in the 1956
Carnets,
remaining unknown until Michel Guérin res-
cued it in the 1996 edition.
Lachenal's narrative is full of his characteristic wit and candor. And it confirms Jean-
Claude's memory that the climb may have been concocted as a publicity stunt.
Thus we wanted to go into the mountains. This became known in Chamonix. Several
friends wanted to join us; one of them wanted to make a photographic
reportage,
the pro-
ceeds of which he would have donated to mountain rescue groups. Even with that aim, the
project hardly pleased us. There was a moment of uncertainty, because it bothered both of
us to turn down such good will.
On the typescript of Lachenal's account, a marginal annotation in Maurice Herzog's
hand reads, “I propose to suppress”; the circled passage begins with “one of them” and
ends with “such good will.”
Later, as the pair sets out from the mountain village of Macugnaga, Lachenal writes
of the locals,
They gave us a welcome that I will not soon forget. Herzog and I could not pass through
unnoticed, but their welcome was not that of stupid curiosity about pseudo-stars, it was the
