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whom, in my shared fantasy with Don Jensen, I utterly identified. With five others the
previous summer, Don and I had climbed a dangerous new route on Mount McKinley's
north face. The next summer we would attempt a fiendish unclimbed ridge on Mount
Deborah, just the two of us, hiking in and out from the Denali Highway, failing at last
2,000 feet below the summit.
In the course of that year, caught up in our hero worship, Don had merged with Ter-
ray, I with Lachenal. Shouting with sheer high spirits on some windswept crag, I would
call out to “Lionel,” and he would answer with “Louis.” Like Terray and Lachenal, we
climbed better together than either us did with others. In the heady flush of youth, we
started to think we were invincible.
After several days in Chamonix, I was invited by Michel Guérin to an informal din-
ner at the house of Jean-Claude Lachenal. A shy, portly man of fifty-four, Jean-Claude
looked nothing like his father. Michel had wisely divined that a social occasion with
friends would make a better ice-breaker than an office interview. Various friends ar-
rived; Jean-Claude broke out a local red wine; and his wife, Arlette, laid out a hearty
spread of sausage from the Grisons, ham, cheese, goose pâté, bread, and homemade
cornichons. Later, as Jean-Claude served champagne, the group waxed reminiscent.
I asked Jean-Claude why he thought Herzog had received such disproportionate
credit for Annapurna, at the expense of his father's. He cocked a jaundiced eye, then
recited an answer that I guessed he had used before: “It was easier to find Maurice
Herzog in the salons of Paris than Louis Lachenal in the mountains of Chamonix.”
After dinner I toured the comfortable chalet, which Lachenal
père
had built with his
own hands, employing a beautiful dark varnished wood, on a sunny hillside directly
opposite the great north face of the Dru. Every detail bespoke loving craft. The central
roof beam was inscribed in Latin:
EDIFICATA ANNO DOMINI 1949
SIT NOMEN DOMINI BENEDICTUM
ADELE ET LOUIS LACHENAL
Jean-Claude opened for me a cunning attic door disguised as a fold-up staircase. I poked
my head into the dark annex. “We slept up there when we were little kids,” he said.
The walls were hung with memorabilia: framed drawings of the great Swiss guide
Lochmatter and of the British pioneers Mummery and Whymper; photos of the Eiger
and Annapurna with the routes inked in; Lachenal's diplomas as ski instructor and
mountain guide.
