Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Terray ended his account of the climb with the avalanche that nearly swept Herzog,
Pansy, and Aila to their deaths. Only a single sentence—one that commentators have
long puzzled over, trying to read between the lines—covers the month-long retreat
from the mountain: “And so, as the dream faded, we returned to earth in a fearful mix-
up of pain and joy, heroism and cowardice, grandeur and meanness.”
Unscathed by his ordeal on Annapurna, Terray flung himself back into mountain-
eering. Herzog, Rébuffat, Lachenal, and Schatz would never go on another expedition.
Couzy's zeal for the far-flung ranges, which flowered in his stellar performances on the
two Makalu expeditions, would be cut short by his untimely death. Terray, however,
used Annapurna (and the coffers of the FFM, swollen by the sales of
Annapurna
) as
a stepping-stone to launch a decade and a half of expeditionary mountaineering the
equal of which perhaps no other climber has ever enjoyed.
Before he could head off again to remote mountains, however, he suffered one of
the tragedies of his life on a climb near Chamonix. As he would throughout the rest of
his career, Terray had taken a gifted protégé under his wing. Francis Aubert had taught
skiing with Terray in Canada the winter before Annapurna, and he had showed im-
mense promise on hard rock and ice. Now, with Lachenal
hors de combat,
it seemed
natural for Terray to recruit Aubert for the ambitious projects that were never far from
his heart.
In September 1950, only two months after his return from Annapurna, Terray set
out with his protégé to tackle the unclimbed and very difficult west face of the Aiguille
Noire de Peuterey. The pair never got to the foot of the wall. Descending a slope on
the approach in the half-light of dawn, on terrain Terray judged not sufficiently diffi-
cult to warrant roping up, Aubert got slightly off route. Terray paused, then coached
his partner back toward the proper line. Just as Aubert was about to reach safe ground,
a large block of granite that he had clasped with his hands came loose on top of him.
There was an agonizing, endless moment as Aubert tried to throw the block away from
him and regain his balance, but it was too much to ask. As Terray watched, his young
friend fell 300 feet to his death.
In
Conquistadors,
Terray does not address the guilt he must have felt for not roping
up. He does not wonder whether he had dragged his protégé in over his head. But a
few sentences register the impact of this accident:
Crazed with grief I called and called to my friend. There came no answer but the sound of
the wind.
This experience left me badly shaken for several months, and for the first time I began to
doubt. Were the mountains worth such sacrifices? Was my ideal no more than a madman's
dream?
