Back in France, Herzog and his team had discussed the possibility of making an alpine approach, of moving swiftly, lightly laden up the mountain, as they had done on many multi-day climbs in the Alps. It seemed aesthetically more pleasing and, on a practical level, would have meant that they could complete the climb much more swiftly. But they were ahead of their time and now, in the great bowl of Annapurna, they were confronted with the realities of Himalayan climbing, the savage heat of the midday sun, the afternoon snowfall that covered their tracks each day, and most of all the effects of altitude, exaggerated by the fact that it was their first visit to the Himalaya. With subsequent visits the speed of acclimatisation undoubtedly improves.
They found that they had no choice but to resort to the siege-style expedition – though they approached it with considerable élan, sharing the task of load carrying with the Sherpas and pushing the route out as fast as possible.
The six climbers alternated out in front, picking their way across the dangerous basin below the Sickle ice cliff, up the steep gully that led into the upper reaches of the mountain. They were full of optimism, yet their differing abilities and characters emerge. Herzog, probably the least capable technical climber of the six, emerged as an extremely strong goer at altitude. The other driving force of the team was Lionel Terray, dogmatic, single-minded, immensely determined, not so much for himself, but for the expedition as a whole. He was prepared to do that little bit extra, to go back down with the Sherpas, to escort them through a dangerous stretch of glacier, rush back up with a heavy load the next day, push the route out a little bit further when others were exhausted. They had already heard that the monsoon had reached eastern India, and was expected to hit Nepal on 5 June. May was now very nearly spent and they were running out of time.
At last, on 2 June, they seemed poised for their bid for the summit. Who goes for the summit depends as much on their position on the mountain at the time as their fitness. Herzog had hoped to make his bid with Lionel Terray, but they had got out of phase with each other, through Terray doggedly stocking Camp 4, knowing it had to be done, even though it would mean he would be in the wrong place to made the summit bid with Herzog. As a result it was Terray’s closest friend, Lachenal, who teamed up with Herzog to climb up to the top camp. Lachenal, a volatile, impetuous personality, was always restless, at times wildly optimistic, but he could also be easily depressed. On Annapurna he had swung from demonic pushes to moments of pessimism, but now, making his way with Herzog and two Sherpas, above the Sickle ice barrier, across the long slope that stretched up towards the summit, it didn’t look as if anything could stop them. They were climbing at over 7,300 metres; every step took a separate effort of will as they ploughed through the freshly fallen snow; high above, the snow-laden wind blasted through the crenellated summit ridge as through the teeth of a comb, trailing long streamers of mist across the sky above them. They plodded on through the afternoon, the ridge never seeming to get any closer, and then, almost before they were aware of it, it was there in front of them, smooth ice-plastered rock.
They hacked out a tiny ledge in the hard snow, erected the tent and, wishing them luck, the two Sherpas hurried back down to the security of the lower camps. The tent was barely big enough for two and already, before dusk, the spindrift hissing down the slope had started to build up between the snow and the tent wall, inexorably pushing them towards the abyss. At altitude there is a terrible lethargy that makes every movement, every task an almost insurmountable challenge. That night they couldn’t face cooking any food, just brewed some tea and swallowed the array of pills that Oudot had prescribed. Through a combination of excitement and discomfort they didn’t sleep much. It had now begun to snow and the wind was tearing at the tent, threatening to pluck it from its precarious perch. By morning the tent had very nearly collapsed; they were both half suffocated, the rime-covered walls pressed down on to their sleeping bags. Dulled by the altitude, it was just too much trouble even to light the stove; it was hard enough wriggling out of their sleeping bags, forcing on frozen boots.
And so they set out, having had only a cup of tea the previous night and nothing at all to eat or drink that morning. The slope looked straightforward so they left the rope behind, but Herzog did push into his sack a tube of condensed milk and some nougat. They struggled upwards through the day, one foot in front of the other, several pants for every step.
Lachenal insisted on stopping and took off his boots to massage his feet; he had lost all feeling, they were so cold.
‘What’ll you do if I turn back?’ Lachenal asked Herzog.
‘Go on by myself,’ was the reply.
‘I’ll keep going then.’
And they plodded on, the mountains around them slowly dropping away below their feet, each of them in a world of his own. Herzog, in a state of euphoria, described it. ‘I was living in a world of crystal. Sounds were indistinct, the atmosphere like cotton wool. An astonishing happiness welled up in me, but I could not define it. Everything was so new, so utterly unprecedented.’
And at last the summit rocks came in sight; there was a short gully leading through them; they climbed it and suddenly the savage wind was tearing at their clothes and faces, the slope dropped away on all sides. They had reached the summit of Annapurna; they were the first men to climb a peak of over 8,000 metres. Herzog had a wonderful sense of joy as he gazed across at the new vistas, now unfolded. The South Face of Annapurna dropped away dizzily below his feet; he could gaze down at the shapely fishtailed summit of Machapuchare, nudging through the dark, banked clouds marching in from the south. They had got there only just in front of the monsoon.
Already Lachenal was impatient to start down, but Herzog, wanting to savour their moment of victory, dug a tiny silk flag from his rucksack, tied it to the ice axe and handed it to Lachenal for the vital photograph. Herzog stayed on the summit for another few moments after Lachenal had started descending the gully and then, almost in a dream, began to follow him down. It was all so miraculous, after being rebuffed by Dhaulagiri, the long search for the way on to Annapurna, and then their race up the mountain. He was hurrying to catch up with Lachenal who was already a tiny dot making the long traverse below the summit rocks. Out of breath, he paused, took off his sack and opened it, he could never remember why. To do this he had taken off his gloves; suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw two dark shapes roll and bounce down the slope – his gloves. He watched them with a growing awareness of the significance of their loss as they vanished into the dazzling white of the snows around him.
He had a pair of socks in his rucksack, but it never occurred to him to use them as gloves. Terray and Rébuffat should be at the top camp by now; they’d look after him; he had to get there as quickly as possible and set off once more. He felt as if he was running, but in fact he was desperately slow – a few slow-motion steps, sit down in the snow for a rest, then a few more steps in the daze of euphoric exhaustion. The clouds were now racing over the top of Annapurna, a bitter, penetrating wind lashing down the slope, but his hands were no longer cold, there was no feeling at all.
The tendrils of cloud wrapped around him. Lachenal had been somewhere in front, but his tracks were covered. Herzog kept going, and at last the tents came in sight. Two tents, when there had only been one that morning. Terray and Rébuffat must be there; his problems were over. He plunged into the tent with a shout of relief, excited to tell them of their successful ascent. They were as delighted as he, but then they noticed his hands; they were like blocks of ice, white, hard and cold. Where was Lachenal: He should have been down in front of Herzog, but he hadn’t arrived. Terray poked his head out of the tent and listened, but heard nothing beside the howling of the wind, and then there was a distant cry.
He got out of the tent and gazed around him, but the cloud had closed in and he could see nothing. He shouted into the mist but there was no reply. Lachenal was one of his best friends, they had done so many hard climbs together. He broke dow
n crying, and then the mists parted, and about a hundred metres below, he saw the body of his friend lying motionless in the snow. He didn’t wait to put on his crampons, just grabbed an ice axe and leapt into a glissade down the steep, hard snow, stopping himself with a jump turn as he came level with Lachenal. It was a rash, but incredibly courageous act.
Fortunately Lachenal had not broken any bones in his fall, but he had lost a crampon and his ice axe, and he was obsessed with worry about his feet which were now frozen hard. He wanted to go straight down that night to reach the doctor, terrified at the prospect of amputation and never again being able to climb. It was all Terray could do to persuade him to climb back up to the tents.
They had a terrible night, Terray and Rébuffat spending most of it massaging and beating the frostbitten limbs of Herzog and Lachenal. In fact they probably did quite a lot of damage, for it has since been found that it is better to avoid any kind of abrasion on frostbitten areas and to use steady body heat to warm up the injured parts. It would in fact have been better to have left the limbs frozen until they got back down to Base Camp. Even so by the morning some life had come back to their limbs but with it also came inflammation and swelling. The storm had now built up to a furious crescendo, spindrift avalanches pouring down the face, crushing the tents, penetrating every chink in the entrance and ventilators. Getting ready in the morning is bad enough in perfect conditions. In a storm with two exhausted, injured men, it must have been desperate. In these circumstances, someone nearly always assumes command; in this instance it was Terray. He shouted at the others to get ready, started to dress Lachenal for the descent and was immediately confronted with an appalling problem. In thawing out, Lachenal’s feet had now swollen and he couldn’t force them into his boots. There seemed only one solution; Terray’s were two sizes larger, and Lachenal could get these on, but then, what about Terray? It would mean forcing his feet into boots that were much too small. He realised the significance of what he was doing, probably condemning himself to severe frostbite, but he didn’t think twice, and taking off his spare socks, managed to squeeze into Lachenal’s boots. He stuffed their sleeping bags into the rucksacks and climbed out of the tent, shouted at Rébuffat to hurry up, and then at last they were all ready and started down the slope.
It was a white-out. They couldn’t see where they were going, couldn’t recognise the séracs and crevasses through which they had weaved on the way up. Herzog was terribly weak, but kept going; Lachenal was almost hysterical with worry about his feet; his natural impatience exaggerated by the crisis. At one moment he fought with Terray to keep rushing downwards, no matter if it was in the wrong direction, and the next demanded they stopped where they were and waited till the weather cleared. The day crept by; no sign of the tent at Camp 4; no sign of the vital gully that led back down through the Sickle ice wall. They were lost, exhausted and almost helpless, faced with the prospect of a night out in the storm without any kind of shelter. Terray began trying to dig out a snow cave with his ice axe; Lachenal had wandered off to look at a part-covered crevasse a few metres away. Suddenly there was a yell; he vanished from sight. They raced over, and there was a shout from its dark depths.
‘It’s all right. I’ve found just the place. There’s a bloody great cave in here.’
Soon they were all down in the cave, sheltered from the tearing wind and cold above. At least they had a chance of surviving the night. Terray pulled out his sleeping bag, longing to snuggle into it, looked across at the others. Rébuffat and Herzog had that look about them that told him they didn’t have their bags; in the rush to get down that morning they had wanted to travel as light as possible, convinced that they could get all the way down that day. Terray shared his bag with the other two, all three squeezing their legs into it.
They shivered and dozed through the night, as the spindrift seeped down into the cave, covering them and all their equipment. At last the dawn arrived. In an ice cave you can’t tell what is happening outside; you can’t hear the howl of the wind and the light filtering through the snow gives no indication of whether it is bright sunlight or thick cloud. Lethargically, they started to hunt for their boots and other gear, hidden under the mantle of icy spindrift. Rébuffat was the first to find his boots, get them on and climb out of the cave. It took him a moment to realise that he was snow blind; the previous day, he and Terray had removed their goggles in an effort to see through the driving snows of the white-out. They were now paying the price for their mistake.
Their spirits dropped; they must all have secretly wondered about their chances of survival. It was a case of the blind leading the lame. Lachenal was the next out; as he poked his head out of the hole he let out a cry of joy. It was a fine, clear day. They might yet survive. Terray also climbed out but Herzog stayed below searching for all their boots and belongings in the snow, digging away with his bare, feelingless hands. At last he found all the vital items and then Terray had a desperate task trying to haul him up the steep snow shoot that led out of the cave. Herzog had lost the use of his hands; his fingers were frozen stick-like talons. There was no feeling at all in his legs. With an enormous struggle he managed to crawl out of his icy tomb.
‘I’m dying,’ he told Terray. ‘You’ll have to leave me’.
Terray did his best to reassure Herzog, and then suddenly there was a shout. It was Schatz; the Sherpas were there too. The previous night they had stopped only a couple of hundred metres short of the camp. They were saved, but their adventures were by no means over. They had a long way to get down. They were involved in an avalanche and only saved because Herzog fell into a crevasse and was caught like an inert anchor, holding the others from the rope tied round his waist. At last, that afternoon they staggered into Camp 2. The other members of the team and, most important, Oudot, the doctor, were there. They had come through it alive, but the pain had only just begun. Then came the agony of intravenous injections given by Oudot in the cramped confines of a two-man tent, of being manhandled down the mountain, and then, in the monsoon rains, back over the switchbacks of the Miristi Khola, down through the foothills. There were days of pain and worry, of amputations by the wayside without the benefit of anaesthetic and wondering how they would adapt to lives without fingers and toes, deprived of the joy of climbing.
Lionel Terray and Gaston Rébuflat had escaped with no more than frost-nipped fingers and toes, and snow blindness that soon wore off. It was undoubtedly a miracle that the four survived at all; there had been so many narrow escapes. With the hindsight of the present day it is easy to pick out mistakes, to observe that the north side of Annapurna was technically easy, but this is to forget how little was known of Himalayan climbing in 1950, how sparse was the level of success up to this time. Considering the problems they had had in trying to find a way on to the mountain and then the limited time they had to climb it, their achievement was all the greater. They displayed élan in their approach to the climb that in many ways was ahead of their time. The team had worked well together. One can’t resist wondering what would have happened had Terray not sacrificed his chance to be on the summit bid. He might well have stayed with Herzog, given him a spare pair of gloves to ensure he got back to their top camp without frostbite, but that is pure conjecture. After getting back, Herzog ended his book with the following words: ‘Annapurna, to which we had gone empty-handed, was a treasure on which we should live the rest of our days. With this realisation we turn a new page: a new life begins. There are other Annapurnas in the lives of men.’
Herzog found his Annapurna in spite of losing all his toes and fingers. He could never climb again but he sublimated his energies in his business and the work of the French Alpine Club, eventually becoming Minister of Sport for France. Today he is an urbane, relaxed man who one feels has led a full and profoundly satisfying life. There are no signs of any discontent or frustration. Lachenal, on the other hand, found it less easy. Terray described it:
‘The curtailment profoundly changed his charact
er. Once he had seemed magically immune from the ordinary clumsiness and weight of humankind and the contrast was like wearing a ball and chain. This slower kind of mountaineering no longer gave him the old feeling of moving in a fourth dimension, of dancing on the impossible and he sought desperately to rediscover it elsewhere.’
He had always been a fast driver, as many climbers are and the recklessness of his driving became legendary. He died four years later in a skiing accident.
Terray was killed in 1965 on the limestone cliffs of the Vercors in Central France. Only a few weeks before, I had climbed with him and the famous Belgian solo climber, Claudio Barbier, on the very same cliff. It had been a joyous, light-hearted day, climbing on the sun-warmed limestone, the wooded valley with its nestling fields and farmhouses down below. It all seemed so peaceful, so free from threat. Terray’s death brought home to me how constant is the risk in climbing, not so much in the moments of acute and obvious danger, as on Annapurna, when fighting for life, every nerve stretched to the limit, but in moments of relaxation on easy ground, when a loose hold, a falling stone, can cause a slip which might end in a long and fatal fall.
Quest for Adventure Page 19
