Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
As he neared the last pages of his book, Terray lapsed into a valedictory mood. Turn-
ing forty, he sensed that his best years lay behind him. He prepared to pass the baton
to younger “tigers,” and looked forward to the settled, self-accepting maturity he had
vainly hoped Lachenal might find.
Conquistadors
ends with a paragraph as memorable
and perfect as the closing lines of
Annapurna:
My own scope must now go back down the scale. My strength and my courage will not
cease to diminish. It will not be long before the Alps once again become the terrible moun-
tains of my youth, and if truly no stone, no tower of ice, no crevasse lies somewhere in wait
for me, the day will come when, old and tired, I find peace among the animals and flowers.
The wheel will have turned full circle: I will be at last the simple peasant that once, as a
child, I dreamed of becoming.
Contrary, however, to his own valedictory prescription, Terray charged ahead in
his early forties into expeditionary adventures every bit as grueling as Fitzroy and
Makalu. In 1962 alone came the stunning trilogy of Jannu, Chacraraju East, and the
Nilgiris. And in 1964, for the first time, Terray went to Alaska.
Very few Europeans had yet ventured into the subarctic mountains of “Seward's
Icebox.” The Duke of the Abruzzi, who seemed to have gone everywhere, had pulled
off a dazzling first ascent of Mount Saint Elias way back in 1897, approaching North
America's third-highest mountain from the seacoast. Heinrich Harrer, the veteran of
the Eiger Nordwand, had enjoyed a single brilliant summer in 1954, when with the
American legend Fred Beckey, he had claimed the first ascents of Mounts Hunter and
Deborah. In 1961, Ricardo Cassin (the great Italian pioneer of the Walker Spur and the
Piz Badile, whom a youthful Terray and Lachenal had despaired of emulating), now
fifty-two years old, crafted the first ascent of a rib in the center of the south face of
McKinley, then the mountain's hardest route. Cassin's party had badly underestimated
Alaskan cold, and several members incurred serious frostbite on the route.
By 1964, however, unlike the Andes, Alaska remained all but terra incognita to the
top European climbers. Terray had first cast his eye on some of the territory's finest
unclimbed mountains in 1955, but year after year, other expeditions had claimed his
attention. During those years, he had corresponded often with Bradford Washburn,
Alaska's finest mountaineer of the previous generation—the first man to climb McKin-
ley three times and the author of a dozen first ascents of lower mountains. Washburn
had tempted Terray with some of the breathtaking large-format aerial photos he had
taken of Alaska's unclimbed prizes.
In 1964, Terray came to Alaska to try Mount Huntington, about ten miles south of
McKinley. Though only 12,240 feet high, it was Alaska's Fitzroy. Many regarded it as
