Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
According to Terray, in his account in
Conquistadors
, by that evening, after his ter-
rible fall past Camp V at dusk, Lachenal remembered nothing of the descent. But of the
summit, he told his best friend (in Terray's paraphrase), “Those moments when one
had expected a fugitive and piercing happiness had in fact brought only a painful sense
of emptiness.”
Only Herzog narrates the long spell while he lingered on top, staring at the horizon,
savoring his ecstasy, posing for the camera with his three flags, changing from black-
and-white to color film, while an increasingly wrought-up Lachenal urged immediate
descent, finally exploding: “Are you mad? We haven't a minute to lose: we must go
down at once.” Only Herzog indicates that in the end Lachenal took off before him,
almost running down the couloir that had led to the final ridge.
Of this summit performance, Lachenal's diary records only the photo-taking. And
rather than hinting at his own mounting anxiety over Herzog's delay, he states merely,
“Without lingering any longer, we started down.”
E
VER SINCE
1950,
THERE HAS BEEN
a small cadre of skeptics within the mountaineering
community who doubted that Herzog and Lachenal reached the summit on June 3. The
doubts spring in part from the celebrated summit photo, in which Herzog holds aloft
the Tricolor tied to his ice axe. Beyond the triumphant climber, a snow slope seems
to angle toward higher ground. Frankly speaking, the summit photo does not look as
though it had been taken on a summit.
In 1957,
Berge der Welt
, the official journal of the Swiss Alpine Club, posthumously
published an interview with Lachenal; Swiss commentators then appended the judg-
ment that Lachenal's memories of the summit were “insufficient.” Two years later an-
other Swiss, Marcel Kurz, wrote, “Lachenal told us that he had lost all memory of that
summit day.”
To put the Swiss canards in perspective, it helps to remember that before the war
it was the British, the Germans, and the Swiss who had led the way in the Himalaya.
The French had only their 1936 attempt on Gasherbrum I to their credit. That the first
8,000-meter summit would be bagged by a French team might stick in the craws of
some of their rivals.
Yet as I traveled in France in 1999, I found that skepticism alive and flourishing
among certain French journalists. Charlie Buffet, of
Libération
, told me, “Almost
everyone who gets involved in this controversy thinks they didn't make the summit.”
Buffet pointed out that Herzog had described “a fierce and savage wind” stinging the
pair's faces on top; yet in the famous photo, Herzog seems to be holding the flag taut
