Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
realizing that, as they were carried out from the mountain after June 6, Lachenal and
Herzog were dosed with morphine to kill the pain of their frostbite almost nightly.
Only Lachenal's diary documents the constant morphine use.)
Alarmed at the extent of the frostbite, Oudot decided to give Lachenal and Herzog
abdominal injections of novocaine. “I used them during the war,” the physician told
Herzog almost jauntily, “and it's the only treatment that's any use with frostbite.” The
injections were excruciating. “I should never, until then, have believed so much pain
to be possible,” wrote Herzog. It is poignant to know that this torture, which the two
men endured with great courage, did nothing whatsoever to forestall their frostbite.
Steeling himself for his second round of shots, Herzog pleaded with Terray to hold
him in his arms. Still wearing a bandana over his eyes as he recovered from snow-
blindness, the “strong man” clasped Herzog. “I howled and cried and sobbed in Ter-
ray's arms while he held me tight with all his strength.”
In
L'Autre Annapurna,
after an interval of forty-eight years, that simple act of
brotherhood has taken on a mystical aura.
Lionel held me in his arms like an infant. He transfused his humanity into me. During this
long torment, I felt a sense of communion with my comrade-in-arms. . . . Between two
howls of pain, I made the firm resolution to be buried later side-by-side with him in the
alpinists' cemetery in Chamonix.
By now not only Lachenal and Herzog, but also the snow-blind and frost-nipped
Rébuffat could not walk. Couzy was completely played out. With his limitless stamina,
Terray moved under his own power, though still recovering from his snow-blindness.
On June 6, Rébuffat was hauled on a Dufour litter (a sled used in emergency evacu-
ations) down the easy track to Camp I. Herzog and Lachenal followed by litter the next
day. “I was wrapped up like a package,” wrote Lachenal in his diary, “and saw abso-
lutely nothing because I still had a bandana over my eyes.”
Below the snow line, the Dufour sled was useless. On June 9, Lachenal was carried
from Camp I down to Base Camp by a single Sherpa, in a device called a
cacolet:
a
chairlike litter made of canvas and webbing, to which the victim was strapped and
bundled, facing backward. The carry made an agonizing trip for the Sherpa, lugging a
burden heavier than he himself weighed. And it was agonizing for Lachenal, too, who
wrote, “It was a very, very hard march, because my legs hung loose and the blood des-
cended to the tips of my feet.” The next day, Herzog was similarly transported to Base
Camp. By now, Rébuffat could walk, though he was still in considerable pain.
The long-anticipated monsoon had arrived. Torrential rains lasted all day, intensi-
fying the team's misery and further threatening the frostbitten duo's health. Leery
