Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Then the raging wind carried a faint but unmistakable “Help.” I got out of the tent and saw
Lachenal three hundred feet below us. Hastily I dragged on my boots and clothes, but when
I came out of the tent again there was nothing to be seen on the bare slope. The shock was
so terrible that I lost my self-control and began to cry, shouting in desperation. It seemed
that I had lost the companion of the most enchanted hours of my life. Overcome with grief I
lay in the snow unconscious of the hurricane that howled around me.
Abruptly, the clouds cleared for a moment. Terray saw Lachenal once more, seem-
ingly even farther below the tent than he had been at first sighting. Without even put-
ting on his crampons, Terray seized his axe and launched into a high-speed glissade,
sliding on his boot soles. The crust was so hard that the ski champion from Grenoble
had trouble stopping.
It was evident that Lachenal had taken a long fall. He was missing his ice axe, one
crampon, his hat, and his gloves. In a state of near hysteria, Lachenal had only one
thought. “My feet are frozen stiff up to the ankles,” he told Terray. “Get me down to
Camp II quickly, so Oudot can give me an injection. Quick, let's get going.”
To try to descend now, with darkness gathering, in full storm, would have meant
certain death. Yet Terray could not reason with his friend.
When he heard me starting to argue, he suddenly grabbed my ice axe and started running
across the slope. His single crampon impeded him, however, and he crumpled onto the snow
weeping and screaming: “We must get down. I've got to have some injections or I'll be
ruined for life. They'll cut off my feet.”
At last Terray wore down his partner's resistance. Chopping steps with desperate
energy, he cut a staircase back up toward the tent. Lachenal followed, literally crawling
on hands and knees.
Inside the tent, Terray tried to unlace Lachenal's boots, but they were frozen and
intractable. Eventually he had to cut them open with his knife. “My heart sank at the
sight of his feet inside, white and utterly insensible.” Eleven years later, Terray recalled
his thoughts at that moment:
Annapurna, the first eight-thousander, was climbed, but was it worth such a price? I had
been ready to give my life for the victory, yet now it suddenly seemed too dearly bought.
Thus the account in
Conquistadors.
Once more, Herzog's version dovetails closely
with Terray's. “My feet are frostbitten,” he quotes Lachenal raving to his friend. “Take
me down . . . take me down, so that Oudot can see to me.” Lachenal, Herzog confirms,
“was obsessed by the fear of amputation.”
