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application, ahead of its time, of alpine-style tactics to a Himalayan objective. Yet, nev-
er one to pat himself on the back, Lachenal attributed the alpine-style assault to ne-
cessity, rather than bold conception: “In fact, the lightness [of the assault] was due
more to our poverty than to any tactical conception: since Annapurna, climbers have
returned to a heavy style.” (“No, absolutely wrong,” screamed Devies in the margin:
“Lightness was a deliberate tactic.”)
On Makalu that summer of 1955, Lachenal pointed out, each climber had been is-
sued a half dozen pairs of boots, including ones specially made of reindeer skin. On
Annapurna five years earlier, “We were happy to have a single pair of ordinary alpine
boots each, reinforced with a felt lining.”
Lachenal admitted that, lacking Himalayan experience, the team misjudged
everything about Annapurna. That accounted for the five-day blunder of attacking the
Northwest Spur.
Herzog had a difficult role, conceded Lachenal, revealing that before the expedition,
the three Chamonix guides held a low opinion of him as a leader: “We even thought
beforehand that he might have been chosen as a kind of arbiter among the three pro-
fessionals within the team.”
Yet Herzog surprised everyone by his performance, and Lachenal was quick to give
him his due: “Very soon, we realized there was no difference between him and us in
terms of stamina or technique, either on ice or on rock.” What Herzog lacked, however,
thanks to his inexperience, was the knack “of judging beforehand the best choices
among the many possible itineraries.” Herzog had, in Lachenal's view, only the most
rudimentary grasp of expedition organization. Thus “He very skillfully oriented his
role toward what truly suited him, that of an extraordinary amateur.”
Herzog's poor organizational skills, in Lachenal's view, were what caused all the
floundering in the lowlands during the first six weeks.
Personally, I have a great need to be animated! These perpetual hesitations during the ap-
proach march, these probes with no follow-through, this disorder didn't suit me at all—it
depressed me. I began to regret missing a good season in the Alps, where the attack immedi-
ately follows the decision, and usually the victory the attack. It was only on the day when
Annapurna was declared our objective and an assault in force was launched that I found at
last what I had come to look for.
Lachenal's critique offers here an intriguing fun-house mirror image of Herzog's.
In Annapurna, the Chamonix guide is presented as a man too impatient and impulsive
to pay heed to reason or judgment. But from Lachenal's strictures, Herzog emerges as
an indecisive ditherer.
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