One of my great heroes, French mountain climber Maurice Herzog, died on 13 December 2012 at age 93, both famous and controversial. Through his pivotal book, Annapurna (1952), the best-selling mountaineering book of all time, he inspired me (and uncountable others in my own and later generations) to climb to the very top – to hell with any and all personal costs. He and Louis Lachenal summited the Himalayan peak Annapurna (8,091 meters/ 26,245 feet) in 1950 – without oxygen – and were the first known climbers to summit one of the 14 mountains over 8,000 meters in height.
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In their bold all-out dash to the summit, Herzog and
Lachenal wore lightweight boots and risked severe frostbite, and indeed both of
them soon lost all their toes and Herzog lost his fingers. Their retreat from the mountain, aided by
some of France’s greatest climbers on the team, was an epic in itself. It would be 20 years before Annapurna was
summited a second time. It’s a bear of a
mountain, and many of mountaineering’s best have died there since.
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One of Herzog’s immortal lessons to me from his experience
this was: “Don’t lose your gloves!” That sounds sensible enough, but in the
extreme experience of hypothermia, inhumanly agonizing climbing fatigue and
lack of rest, one does not always focus to the optimum. And on Annapurna’s high
altitude they were massively oxygen-deprived.
On the descent of Annapurna, Herzog took off his gloves to get into his
rucksack, and the gloves blew away down the slope. No spare gloves/mittens = disaster; there is
such a thing as taking lightweight packing to absurd extremes. He lost his fingers (as well as his toes).
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I remembered his plight in horror when in April 1975 I was
alone on the summit of Mt. Marcy in unseasonably brutal freezing winter
conditions while shivering with hypothermia and at the end of my wits and
strength, and when taking off my mittens to take a photo, one mitt in my only
pair of mittens blew away; it started sliding down toward the void of Panther
Gorge and I quickly stepped out and got a boot on it before it was lost. I vowed that very day to splurge and buy an
extra pair of mitts for all future cold expeditions. Don’t forget that lesson!
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Another great lesson from this Annapurna epic was the
survival value of snow caves. On their
desperate descent the frostbitten Herzog and Lachenal were rescued by their
fellow teammates, Gaston Rebuffat and Lionel Terray. Someone accidentally fell into a crevasse that
luckily had them slide somewhat laterally (rather than vertically) into a snow
cave-like cavity. There they weathered
out the wild wind and cold, but with only one sleeping bag for four men. (That had to have been one long night.)
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When they broke out for a desperate retreat to lower camps
the next morning, the physically able were snow-blinded, and they were guided
by the cripples who still had vision. It
was but a marginal team arrangement, but it got them down.
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Climbers earlier had been well above 8,000 meters on both
Everest and K2, but without reaching the summits. The French feat was great, and Herzog’s
well-written account of it electrified the mountaineering world. Everest was finally summited in 1953 by the
strong British expedition, and K2 was summited in 1954 by two in the Italian
team backed up by the immortal Walter Bonatti (another of my greatest heroes).
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One great achievement by Herzog and the French team in 1950
was that they had to do a quick and completely original exploration and reconnaissance
of the mostly unknown Annapurna region to even find the mountain in the far
back wilderness, and they were pressured hard by time as the coming summer
monsoon would smother them in storm. Heroes
come through in desperate situations. With
a bit of luck.
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The Herzog legacy has hit some bumps in recent years as
newer discoveries in climbing history have made some of the previously unknown details
clearer. Controversy is not unusual to the sport of
climbing, since we are all egotistical lunatics and closet glory-hounds. (Example:
most of my own greatest climbs were solo with no witnesses and of
moderate difficulty; yet I will brag about them until my dying day! Climbing defines us at a very fierce level.) Some of the members of this 1950 French team
did not get the glory they deserved in Herzog’s book.
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For example:
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Lionel Terray – author of perhaps the greatest title
describing the lunacy of mountain climbers, Conquistadors of the
Useless -- was on the team and an important element in the expedition’s
success and the rescue of the summiteers.
Terray was a great one, specializing in fast and light ascents way
before it became esteemed for its aesthetic purity. He did the first ascent in 1955 of Makalu
(8,481 meters and 5th highest peak in the world) with Jean Couzy,
and this French expedition later put seven more members on the summit before
going home, a tremendous achievement. He
also did the first ascent of Cerro Fitzroy in Patagonia, 1952, with Guido
Magnone, and the first ascent of Mt. Huntington in Alaska in 1964.
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Later discovered writings by Louis Lachenal, who summited
Annapurna with Herzog, have apparently added new details to the story of the
climb. Lachenal and Terray did the
second ascent of the North Face of the Eiger in 1947, an epic event.
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Also on Herzog’s Annapurna team was Gaston Rebuffat – the skillful
master of climbing technique and author of exquisite books on the grace of the
upward moving mountaineer. Gaston helped
save the day in the retreat on Annapurna.
On his resume he was the first to climb all six of the Great North Faces
in the Alps. Another of my great
heroes. A stylist, a romantic and a
visionary.
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The controversy, in sum, is that Herzog as organizer/ leader
of the expedition monopolized the rights to information for the press and the
world at large, and thus his teammates – who saved his life – were pushed a bit
into the background in his book and in immediate mountaineering fame.
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Ok, I accept this.
Mountain climbers are not (quite) gods.
We are often pricks. Human weaknesses
are expected, and humans as climbers are not completely rational. (How would you categorize someone who lusts
for these dangerous desolate peaks?) I
am extremely glad to see the day when the other members of the 1950 Annapurna
expedition are given their long-delayed due, and I’m sorry that Herzog did not
share the glory as he might have. I hope
to someday read the full accounts of others on the expedition. Mountains seem (from human perspective) to be
not always fair to those who assault them, and neither are mountaineering
historians.
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Yet, all in all, Maurice Herzog, by publishing
Annapurna in 1952, ignited a holy spark in so many of us
misfits and inspired us to climb far beyond our limitations and to reach for
the very top. I thank him for that
heroic vision.
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-Zenwind.
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