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Nonetheless, by 1952, Terray was off on another expedition. This time the objective
was Fitzroy, a magnificent spear of granite and ice in the heart of storm-lashed Patago-
nia. Though only 11,319 feet high, Fitzroy was technically more difficult by a whole
order of magnitude than any remote mountain yet climbed in the world. Several previ-
ous attempts had accomplished nothing more than reaching the base of the 2,500-foot-
high pyramid where the climbing began in earnest.
Fitzroy too would be marred by tragedy on the approach, when one of France's most
talented young climbers, Jacques Poincenot, drowned in a botched river crossing, as
the rope he had hoped to use for safety jammed, holding him instead pinned and help-
less under water. His teammates pondered abandoning the expedition, but in the end
pushed on. (The Aiguille Poincenot, one of Fitzroy's handsomest satellites, commem-
orates the lost climber.)
After three weeks of effort getting into position, with the team hunkering down in
125-mile-an-hour winds, Terray and Guido Magnone tackled the 2,500-foot pyramid.
They succeeded only after both men led pitches of a higher grade of difficulty than
had yet been solved in the expeditionary ranges. On the final headwall below the sum-
mit—after that revelatory outburst “Guido, the sardine tin!”—Terray pounded in the
pair's last piton, then pulled himself up the cliff. A tentless bivouac ensued before the
exhausted duo got off the last rappel and joined their jubilant teammates.
In a journal article the next year, Terray wrote, “Of all the climbs I have done, the
Fitzroy was the one on which I most nearly approached my physical and moral limits.”
Nine years later, in Conquistadors, he saw no reason to revise that judgment.
Throughout the decade of the 1950s, Terray's appetite for what he called “mountain
ranging” was astounding. Back from Fitzroy, he stayed briefly in Chamonix before
heading off again to Peru, lured by the invitation of a pair of well-off and talented
Dutch clients he had guided in the Alps. In the prime of life, brimming with confidence
despite the deaths that had clouded his joy in the mountains, Terray now demonstrated
his strength by knocking off the highest unclimbed peak in the central Andes,
20,981-foot Huantsan, with clients rather than colleagues as his ropemates.
For Terray, further expeditionary triumphs followed at the average rate of one a
year. During the 1950s, no one else in the world was spearheading such bold deeds in
the remote ranges at even half Terray's pace. There was the Makalu reconnaissance,
culminating in the bagging of Chomolonzo with Couzy in 1954, then Makalu itself
with Couzy the following year. Although Annapurna had cost its victors all but their
lives, Makalu was such a smooth success that Terray confessed to a feeling of anticli-
max, even of disappointment, on the summit. In a characteristically passionate flight,
he later scolded his own hubris:
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