Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
We climbed very much better together than either of us did apart. Our differing characters
and physical aptitudes complemented each other, each of us making up for the other's weak-
nesses.
Lachenal was by far the fastest and most brilliant climber I have ever known on delicate
or loose terrain. His dexterity was phenomenal, his vitality like that of a wild beast, and his
bravery amounted almost to unawareness of danger. On his day he was capable of
something very like genius, but strenuous pitches gave him trouble, and above all he was
unpredictable. Perhaps because of his very impulsiveness and incredible optimism he lacked
patience, perseverance and forethought. He also suffered from a bad sense of direction.
For myself, I was the less gifted partner on any kind of ground; but I had more stamina
and was stronger, more obstinate and more reflective. I suppose I was the moderating ele-
ment in the team, but it also seems to me that I gave it the stability and solidity necessary
for the really major undertakings.
The apotheosis of the
cordée
came in 1947, when Lachenal and Terray made the
second ascent of the Eiger Nordwand, the deadliest wall in the Alps. Terray had de-
voted a long and wonderful chapter in
Conquistadors
to this stunning climb. Don and
I each read the chapter again and again.
Inevitably, we began to identify with Terray and Lachenal. The analogy was not
perfect, but close enough to allow our fantasy to blossom. Like Terray, Don was stocky
and strong, with immense stamina. He was far more deliberate than I, and could wait
out any storm with a placid repose that it was hopeless for me to try to emulate. Like
Lachenal, I was thin and relatively lithe. My forte in the mountains was the same as
Lachenal's, loose and mixed rock and snow. And, as Don once told me, I was the most
impatient person he had ever met.
We climbed together every chance we could get—on spring and autumn weekends
at the Shawangunk Cliffs in New York state, in winter on the frozen ice gullies of New
Hampshire's Mount Washington, over Christmas on ten-day trips into the high Col-
orado Rockies, where we made a number of first winter ascents. And in the summer of
1964, we locked fates on a two-man expedition to the unexplored east ridge of Mount
Deborah in Alaska. That expedition—a grinding forty-two-day failure in the course of
which several times we came close to getting killed—remains the most intense ordeal
of my life. Near the end of that demoralizing journey, Don, with his Terray-like per-
severance, still longed to head east through the Hayes Range in search of other moun-
tains, while I wanted only to flee south to the Denali Highway and hot showers and
cheeseburgers in greasy cafes.
At some point, our identification with Terray and Lachenal took on a power that
transcended mere hero worship. Like the kids I had grown up with, playing pickup
baseball in the vacant lots of Boulder, pretending to be Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays,
