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affirm that his friend Lachenal was the most gifted alpinist he had ever seen, and to
hear Lachenal say that Terray was the strongest alpinist he had ever heard anyone talk
about.”
Yet the obituary cannot resist advancing the idea that with the reconstituting of
their own Annapurna
cordée
on Monte Rosa, Lachenal's comeback reached its culmin-
ation:
Together, we produced the proof that the mountains were ours once more. When, five years
before, we lay despairing side-by-side in the Chamonix hospital, thinking that never again
would we rediscover these great joys of our lives, we could not have imagined so great a
happiness, shared with one another.
Six years after Lachenal's death, in
Conquistadors,
Terray offered a more nuanced
and wistful encomium for his best friend. “Lachenal was by far the most talented
climber I have ever met,” Terray wrote, “and I would go so far as to say that at the
height of his career his quality amounted to genius.”
Yet Terray was not fooled into believing that after his amputations Lachenal could
ever fully regain his mastery. “Outside the mountain world he was like an eagle with
clipped wings, ill-adapted to the humdrum life of society.” The loss of his toes, thought
Terray, dictated Lachenal's increasing “eccentricity and bitter wit,” and explained his
driving:
What he really sought in the intoxication of speed was escape from the human condition
which he now felt so heavily. Once he had poised over the fall of cliffs with the lightness of
a bird, and it hurt him to be transformed into a blundering animal like the rest of us. Behind
the wheel of his car he seemed to recapture those instants of heavenly grace.
Terray set his hopes not on Lachenal's return to alpine mastery, but on his accept-
ance of his limitations:
Yet wisdom seemed to be coming with the years. Already he was driving less madly, and it
had begun to look as though he would soon resign himself to being a man like any other.
The affectionate father he had always been was getting the better of the panther of the
snows. All the signs pointed to his ending up as a comfortable, well-known local citizen,
looked on by all with affection and respect. Fate, however, had decided otherwise.
For Adèle, widowed with two young boys, practicing no profession of her own, the
future promised to be hard. It was at this point that Herzog made a consequential in-
tervention. In France, the legally recognized position of
tuteur
—a kind of guardian,
godfather, and benefactor rolled into one—had been established to ameliorate the lot
