Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Dhaula (as the team had nicknamed the great mountain) and find a feasible route up it,
only to be thwarted at every hand. “Morale is really low,” Lachenal noted as early as
May 5. Terray had came back disgusted from a reconnaissance up the Dambush Khola:
“Lionel's first words were of Dhaula: 'You can just stick it up your ass.' ” (Needless
to say, this outburst appears not in
Annapurna
but in Lachenal's unexpurgated diary.)
Terray went so far as to venture the opinion that Dhaulagiri would never be climbed.
(The mountain finally succumbed in 1960 to a Swiss team led by Max Eiselin.)
Impressed by his power on the trail and his ability to carry very heavy loads, the
porters had nicknamed Terray “the strong man.” Throughout those seven weeks, even
while ill, he had pushed the search as vigorously as any of his teammates. Now even
the strong man seemed ready to throw in the towel.
The monsoon could arrive within as little as two weeks, and the expedition had ac-
complished nothing grander than sorting out the errors on the Indian Survey maps.
The team faced the prospect of returning to France empty-handed, without even hav-
ing set foot on either of the 8,000-meter peaks that Devies had sent them off to con-
quer.
W
HEN
T
ERRAY HAD MET
L
ACHENAL
five years before Annapurna, one of the great partner-
ships in mountaineering history was born. Its inception, however, was far from auspi-
cious. During the last months of the war, in the spring of 1945, Terray was changing
trains in Annecy. A “poorly dressed young man,” as Terray later recalled, came up to
him, pushing a bicycle with one hand and holding a can of milk in the other, and said,
“Aren't you Lionel Terray?”
When Lachenal offered his name, Terray realized that the two had been briefly in-
troduced on the streets of Chamonix three years before. Then Lachenal had been wear-
ing his Jeunesse et Montagne uniform, which made him “a rather more dashing fig-
ure” than the apparent vagabond in the train station (“The youth's rather pitiful con-
dition made me wonder if he was out of work”).
Lachenal's reputation as a climber had reached Terray's ears. The two adjourned to
a bistro for a beer. Yet at the outset of their chat, a fundamental difference in values
nearly quashed any chance of friendship. Though no Gaullist, Terray was a patriot.
With Germany in retreat, he had joined the underground Compagnie Stéphane, a crack
outfit devoted to guerrilla warfare in the mountains. Terray would later recall, “The
eight months I spent in [the company] were among the most wonderful in my whole
life.” In the middle of winter, Terray and his comrades climbed technical routes in the
Alps to gain aeries from which they might direct grenades and bullets against high
Nazi outposts. Several of his friends were killed, and he had a number of close calls.
