Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
an early age, Louis was a born craftsman. One day his pals found him shod in what
looked an expensive pair of after-ski boots. Where had he gotten them?
“I made them myself,” he answered proudly.
“With what?”
“With my hands.”
“But the leather?”
“I found an old scrap that I reworked.”
“And the soles?”
“Some old satchels.”
From his first leads on rock onward, Louis was so much more agile and skilled than
any of his friends that they were dazzled by his technique. At the age of sixteen, he
bicycled to Chamonix, where the giants of the Mont Blanc massif smote him, just as
they had Terray at an even earlier age. Two years later, with a childhood friend, still
innocent of any formal training, Lachenal rashly undertook an ascent of the Grépon.
The pair survived a descent in a furious storm and a bivouac in the snow. His friend
never climbed again.
Louis grew up thin and lanky, with powerful shoulders. His hairline began to recede
in his twenties, though he never become as bald as Terray. He wore his intensity in
his narrow face. Gradually over the years, a look almost of anguish printed itself on
his countenance: the high forehead and the sensuous lips were dominated by the fixed
arch of his eyebrows, a perpetual frown on his brow.
One of Louis's adolescent playmates was Adèle Rivier, a tomboy who climbed and
camped with the best of them, notwithstanding the overprotective instincts of her par-
ents. Once Louis and Adèle fell in love, the parents grew more and more vigilant.
Her father was an important engineer in Annecy, descended from an aristocratic Swiss
family. Though he treated Louis with a certain stern kindness, it was clear that he did
not expect his daughter to marry the son of a grocer.
The obstacles to their romance, like the challenge of sneaking into a movie theater,
only made Lachenal's passion keener. Meeting furtively, the pair courted, then secretly
affianced. Suspecting something, M. Rivier called Lachenal to account and acerbically
cross-examined the
séducteur.
In 1939, as he turned eighteen, a series of events threw Lachenal's life into upheav-
al. He and Adèle passed their
baccalauréat
together, but suddenly her father died. His
passing only stiffened Mme. Rivier's opposition to her daughter's match: now she for-
bade Adèle all contact with Louis.
The war broke out in early autumn. No one went climbing. Casting about for
a métier, Louis worked desultorily in his parents' shop, went for long walks in the
