Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Rébuffat seconded him: “We didn't come to the Himalaya to be beasts of burden.”
The indefatigable Terray turned scornfully on his teammates: “A climber ought to
be able to carry his gear. We're as good as the Sherpas, aren't we?”
Bent panting over his ice axe, Lachenal inveighed, “If we wear ourselves out with
this ridiculous porterage, how the hell can we manage in a few days' time?”
Terray lost his temper. “And you call yourselves Chamonix guides! You're just
damn amateurs, that's what you are!”
This scene, a rare instance of open conflict acknowledged in
Annapurna,
is corrob-
orated by Terray and even by a terse entry in Lachenal's diary: “Lively altercation with
Lionel over this method of proceeding.” In Herzog's telling, the episode redounds fa-
vorably on the “supermen,” as Lachenal mockingly calls Herzog and Terray: “You're
supermen, real supermen, and we're just poor weaklings.”
Yet the truth of the matter was that by now Herzog and Terray were in far better
form than the rest of their teammates. The next day, angling for the first time above
20,000 feet, Terray broke trail through the worst snow yet, thigh-deep powder. He was
unable to gain even three feet a minute: one whole hour to climb a paltry 150 feet. In
his wake, the Sherpas Pansy and Aila carried heavy loads.
That night the trio camped at 21,650 feet, three in a two-man tent, with only two
sleeping bags. Recalled Terray,
We spent a night of terror listening to the avalanches that thundered down the couloir less
than fifty feet from our tent, which shook with the wind of their passing. The Sherpas never
closed an eye all night, but just sat there smoking cigarette after cigarette.
The next day, exhausted, Terray forced the route another 600 feet, climbing a 60
degree ice wall. “Deep inside me, I was beginning to doubt. If it went on like this every
day we should all be worn out long before reaching the summit, even if an avalanche
didn't settle the matter before then.”
The north face of Annapurna is not very difficult technically. There is virtually no
rock on it that needs to be climbed, and only a few really steep pitches of ice. Yet the
face is an extremely dangerous one—a huge open bowl of ice and snow torn with daily
avalanches in April and May. During the half century since the French expedition, An-
napurna has proven itself arguably the most dangerous of all the fourteen 8,000-meter
peaks. For every two climbers who have reached its summit, another has died on the
mountain.
The constant strain of worrying about avalanches began to take its toll on the
Frenchmen. With Terray momentarily worn out, now Herzog came to the fore, per-
forming a prodigious feat of trail-breaking that pushed the team's progress to 23,500
