Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
By September, the men were working regularly together. Word of the project got
out. At one point, Lachenal showed his manuscript to Rébuffat, hoping the stylish
writer Gaston had become could help him improve it. According to Françoise, Herzog
called Rébuffat: “He was crying on the telephone, for fear Gaston would help the
Car-
nets
to get published.” Indeed, by the autumn of 1955, Lachenal and Cornuau had se-
cured a contract from the Parisian publisher Pierre Horay.
On November 25, 1955, Lachenal prowled the streets of Chamonix looking for a
friend to join him on a ski outing. It was his notion to take the
téléphérique
up to the
Aiguille du Midi, then ski down the Vallée Blanche all the way to the town of Monten-
vers. It was a cold, wintry day with a violent wind, but Lachenal had his heart set on
his project. His good friend the ski champion James Couttet turned him down, saying,
“I have to do some painting on my house.” Lachenal sought out Elisabeth Payot, but
she had had a recent foot operation. “Call up your brother,” said the impatient guide.
So it was Jean-Pierre Payot who accompanied Lachenal up to the cable car station
on the Midi. Forty-four years later, Payot remembers that day. “We went down a
snowy couloir, chatting easily, to the Vallée Blanche. The wind and cold were pretty
bad. Lachenal said, 'It dopes you a bit—gets you going.'
“We arrived at the first seracs. It was blowing in our faces. We had no goggles in
those days. We started out skiing, unroped. The last thing Lachenal said was, 'Il y a le
pêt.' ” The remark, in local patois, means, “The wind's so bad it's dangerous.”
“I was only two meters ahead of him,” Payot continues. “In the moment it took to
turn around, I heard the sound of his aluminum skis clacking against the ice as he went
down. That noise stayed in my head for ages.”
Lachenal had broken through a snow bridge and fallen into a hidden crevasse. Had
the pair been roped, he might have been saved—but the Vallée Blanche was Lachenal's
backyard, where he had performed many more dangerous exploits than this swift ski
descent.
“I heard him fall. Then there was silence. Later we learned that he had suffered
le coup de lapin
—the way you kill a rabbit. He'd hit the back of his head, breaking
his neck. Lachenal was forty-five meters down. I shouted, but there was no answer. I
thought, what should I do? In my despair, I thought, maybe I should just jump into
another hole, and nobody will ever find us.
“Instead, I climbed back up to the
téléphérique
station.” (This ascent, in howling
wind, through loose snow, was a superhuman feat.) “The station was closed when I got
there, so I traversed a thousand meters to the cosmic ray research hut. The hut keeper
was as drunk as a lord. I kept trying to explain, but he understood nothing. I asked to
use the telephone. 'No, it's not working,' he said. Finally I got through at 11:00
P.M.
