Breakthrough - True Summit - page 58

children to be proud of having a well-known father.” Herzog went on to describe the
“hell” that—according to Anne Morrow Lindbergh, whom Herzog knew well—her
own children had endured as the offspring of the famous aviator.
So guarded has Herzog been about his private life that, paradoxically, we know less
about this most famous mountaineer in French history than we do about his colleagues
Rébuffat, Terray, and Lachenal. The habit of self-concealment seems to have set in
early.
H ERZOG ' S MEMOIR does offer certain details of the Annapurna expedition that, while
agreeing in their general outlines with the narrative in Annapurna, cast new light on
the famous ascent. In the very first pages of L'Autre Annapurna, Herzog insists that
his selection by the Himalayan Committee as leader of the expedition was unanimous,
and that he in turn chose the rest of the team. Herzog alludes to two leading candidates
who were vetoed by the committee, and one who was accepted only on probation.
One of the most famous Chamonix guides, Herzog states, was excluded because he
demanded to be paid for his participation on the expedition. The cognoscenti, puzzling
gleefully over this aspersion in 1998, agreed that Herzog must have been referring to
Armand Charlet, a generation older than Terray, Lachenal, and Rébuffat and otherwise
an obvious choice for Annapurna. About the identity of the second anonymous reject-
ee, impugned by Herzog for his “excessive character,” the experts were divided. The
canard was too vague to point unambiguously at one member of the celebrated com-
pany, though the name André Contamine was raised more than once.
Herzog then let slip his juiciest insider gossip:
The fate of another of the best-known [Chamonix guides] was resolved by conditionally ac-
cepting him. In case of any major difficulty during the expedition, I had the absolute power,
without appeal, to send him back to France, that is, to banish him. I never had to exercise
this clause (which some might judge rather leonine) because—despite what was apparently
divulged much later—everyone conducted himself as a true comrade on the mountain.
Vague though these bureaucratic sentences sound, expert observers almost unanim-
ously agreed that they referred to Lachenal. “Despite what was apparently divulged
much later” seems an oblique disclaimer of Guérin's edition of the Carnets.
If so, one wonders whether Lachenal knew that he was under probation on An-
napurna, and that Herzog was ready to send him home at the first sign of rebellion.
In any event, the tensions and the barely checked contempt that sprinkle the candid
passages in Lachenal's diary give vivid testimony to the strain under which Herzog's
knights of the sky prepared to launch themselves toward Annapurna's summit.