Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
burn photos of Huntington, with a 1965 interoffice memo attached: “Un petit souvenir
d'Alaska—Brad.”
Marianne invited Michel to look inside a high cupboard. On tiptoe, he pulled open
the door, reached inside, and retrieved an old, scarred rope and a beat-up rucksack. “I've
never seen this before,” Michel mused. The pack had holes torn in it. Michel opened it.
Inside, we saw a smashed headlamp, stirrups, broken carabiners.
It hit us both at the same moment. This was the rope and pack and hardware Terray
had been carrying on his fatal climb in the Vercors in 1965. Never before had Mari-
anne chosen to show these relics to Michel.
I looked at my friend. Stricken—for Terray had been the hero of his youth too—he
turned away. Tears choked the back of my throat.
In the silence, I took one of Terray's broken carabiners in my hands, and turned it
this way and that. It was as close as I could come to meeting the man.
