Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Miristi Khola), but leading virtually none of the pitches on the mountain itself. (They
would, to be sure, participate in a heroic act of rescue on the descent.) Perhaps the pair
were simply in awe of the three great guides; perhaps they were further intimidated
by the strong personalities of their four elders. (Along with the others, moreover, they
had sworn unflinching obedience to Herzog.) Couzy in particular never seemed fully
to acclimatize. In all the accounts of the expedition, he lurks in the background, a silent
collaborator who gets along with his teammates by never thrusting his own character
to the fore.
Whether or not in recognition of Couzy's poor form on the mountain, as the team
at last came to grips with Annapurna, Herzog took the young engineer aside and said,
“Couzy, you are going to have a thankless job.” He then ordered the twenty-seven-
year-old to take charge of the grunt work of organizing the porters and Sherpas to
carry their loads to a permanent Base Camp at the foot of the north face. The chore
would take days, and Couzy would have to hump loads himself, while his five team-
mates soared across untrodden terrain above.
In Annapurna, Couzy responds to this disheartening directive with staunch loyalty:
“It certainly doesn't sound much fun, but if the job's really got to be done . . .”
Herzog praises the self-sacrifice of this youngest knight of the sky:
He did [his job] to perfection and without a single word of complaint, although he knew
that, when the final attack was launched, he would not be sufficiently acclimatized and so
would lose the chance of being on it. It is this admirable spirit of self-denial which determ-
ines the strength of a team.
Couzy's private thoughts on this matter have escaped the record. But in 1999,
Couzy's widow, Lise, told this writer, “It was Marcel [Schatz] and Jean who found
the passage [up the Miristi Khola] in a very tight valley. Herzog later said, ' We de-
cided. . . .' But it was Marcel and Jean who found it.”
Choosing her words cautiously, Lise Couzy added, “When you bring together men
like this on an expedition, there are always problems and disagreements. Jean was cor-
rect with Herzog, but there was not an affinity between them. They did not have the
same passions. Herzog was not an enemy, but he was not a great friend, either.”
What with the loss of five days on the Northwest Spur, it was not until May 23
that the team established Camp I, at an altitude of 16,750 feet—a discouraging 10,000
feet below the distant summit. Herzog had received a radio bulletin about the weather
farther south, in India. In Annapurna, he gives voice to the hectic urgency the whole
team now felt: “The arrival of the monsoon was announced for about June 5. We had
just twelve days left. We'd have to move fast, very fast indeed.”
Search WWH ::




Custom Search