One’s first visit to the Himalaya is always immensely exciting. There is the anticipation of the climbing on mountains higher than one has ever been to before, the anxiety of how one will adapt to altitude or, on larger expeditions, whether one will be a member of one of the teams to reach the top. But beyond that is the fascination of the country itself, not just the mighty snow peaks that can be glimpsed, often half hidden, elusive and mysterious through the haze from the ever-ascending crests of the foothills, but of a new and different people; the women in their long cotton skirts, heavy earrings and gold stud in one nostril, often beautiful in a subtle, gentle way, the men, lightly built, lean from hard work, but laughing and friendly. Every inch of fertile ground is intensely farmed in terraces carved from the steep hillside, the houses, with mud walls, often with elaborately carved window frames and either thatched or slated roofs, nestle into the country with the same feeling of belonging that I’ve seen in English Lakeland farmhouses or the old Swiss mountain chalets.
But for Maurice Herzog and his team of eight the excitement was especially intense. It was 1950. Only one of them had ever been to the Himalaya before. Nobody had ever climbed a peak of over what has become the magic height of 8,000 metres; and only one solitary mountaineering expedition had ever been into Nepal (to Kangchenjunga back in 1930), for that mountain kingdom which straddles the spine of the Himalaya for about 650 kilometres and which contains eight of the fourteen highest peaks of the world had kept its borders closed to almost all foreigners until 1949. The pre-war British expeditions to Everest had all made their approach through Tibet. Now, in the post-war period, the position was reversed. With the Chinese taking over in Tibet, that country was closed to outsiders, while Nepal was beginning to open up.
The French had played a minor part in the expeditions that had attempted the highest peaks of the world before the Second World War. But the 1950 Annapurna expedition was to be the first of a series organised centrally by the French Alpine Club which were to have a remarkably high level of success. A committee nominated both the leader and all the members of the team. Their selection was the more difficult because so few French climbers had been to the Himalaya and of course, with the gap of the war, the few that had were probably over their prime. The younger French climbers had, however, been undergoing a renaissance of hard Alpine climbing. Before the war, pioneering the steep and difficult face routes of the Alps had been a preserve of the Germans, Austrians and Italians, who had claimed the north faces of the Eiger, Grandes Jorasses, Matterhorn and Badile. The French approach, like the British, had been rather conservative, rejecting the techniques needed to scale the steepest walls of ice, techniques that had been developed on the sheer limestone walls of the Dolomites and Austrian Alps.
After the war, however, a new breed of French climbers had emerged, keen to catch up with modern Alpine trends. Lionel Terray and Louis Lachenal had made the second ascent of the North Wall of the Eiger. French climbers were repeating the hardest routes put up before the war and were beginning to pioneer technically hard rock routes in the Mont Blanc region. Terray and Lachenal must have been obvious choices for the team. They were very much the modern post-war climber; both had been keen and talented amateur climbers and had then decided to base their lives around climbing, becoming Chamonix guides, no easy feat for men not born in the Chamonix valley. Gaston Rébuffat came from a similar background, though born and brought up in Marseilles. He had learnt his climbing on the sun-blazed rocks of the Calanques sea cliffs, but had gone on to do many of the most difficult climbs in the Alps. Jean Couzy and Marcel Schatz, on the other hand, were talented young amateurs. Both came from the traditional middle-class backgrounds which were the hall marks of the pre-war and immediate post-war mountaineers, certainly the ones who were invited on Himalayan expeditions in both France and England at this time.
The leader, Maurice Herzog, was also an amateur climber. His appointment caused a good deal of argument, his critics pointing out that Herzog was not at the forefront of hard climbing in the Alps. He had, on the other hand, got a broad Alpine background, was secretary of the elite Groupe de Haute Montagne, was a good organiser and committee man and acceptable to the French climbing establishment. He had climbed with all the members of the team and had the necessary force of personality, combined with tact and sympathy, to co-ordinate the efforts of a group of individualists.
The team was made up by three climbers who had more of a support role: Jacques Oudot, the doctor, Marcel Ichac as climbing camera man, and Francis de Noyelle, a young French diplomat who came along as liaison officer and in effect was their Base Camp manager. Herzog got his first glimpse of the great peaks of the Himalaya on 10 April, from the brow of a hill above the small town of Tansing. He wrote:
‘The sight which awaited us at the top of the hill far exceeded anything we had imagined. At the first glance we could see nothing but filmy mist; but looking more closely we could make out, far away in the distance, a terrific wall of ice rising above the mist to an unbelievable height, and blocking the horizon to the north for hundreds and hundreds of miles. This shining wall looked colossal, without fault or defect.’
This was Dhaulagiri. They had permission for both Dhaulagiri, 8,167 metres and Annapurna, 8,091 metres, but first they had to find the way to the foot of their mountains. The maps of the Nepal Himalaya were particularly inaccurate, for the Survey of India had not been allowed into Nepal and consequently most of the mapping had been done from a distance. They reached the village of Tukucha on 22 April and immediately split up into reconnaissance parties to determine which mountain to attempt and the route that would give the greatest chance of success.
Initially they were attracted to Dhaulagiri. Higher of the two and by far the most obvious, it rises in a huge isolated hump above the Kali Gandaki, steep on every side. They made three reconnaissances but were discouraged by what they found. They had judged the appearance of the difficulties by their own Alpine standards, but once they attempted the long steep ridges they quickly discovered how much greater was the scale of everything, combined with the insidious effects of the greater altitude. They then turned to Annapurna, whose upper slopes they could see were less steep, but first they had to find a way to the foot of the mountain. The map was particularly misleading, putting both the Tilicho Pass and the range of mountain peaks that sweep to the north of Annapurna in the wrong place. As a result it took two further exploratory trips to find a way to its base.
Time was now slipping past all too quickly. In a spring or pre-monsoon attempt the time available for climbing in Nepal is bounded by the end of winter, the thawing of winter snows towards the end of March and the arrival of the monsoon towards the end of May or early June, and it was now 14 May. They had spent very nearly a month on reconnaissances.
At Tukucha Herzog held a meeting. He asked everyone their opinion, let them all have their say, before summing up the consensus that Dhaulagiri was impossible, at any rate as far as they were concerned, but that Annapurna offered a chance of success. It was an agonising choice. Dhaulagiri was a magnificent challenge; they could at least see the way on to it, hard though it obviously was. They had still only had glimpses of the elusive Annapurna, by penetrating the precipitous Miristi Khola, which seemed to give the only feasible approach to the North Face, but they had only had a limited view of this and of the North-West Ridge, though these seemed less steep than those on Dhaulagiri. It was Herzog’s ultimate responsibility. In Terray’s words, ‘Maurice Herzog hesitated before the choice. Should he abandon a prize, however doubtful, in favour of a mystery so insubstantial? Could he expose men who had sworn to obey him to mortal danger?’ In some ways I envy the level of authority that Herzog had vested in him. On my own Annapurna South Face Expedition in 1970 the members of the team had signed an agreement which included a promise to obey their leader, but I always had a feeling that this was something that would be ignored in the stress of the moment if ever my own commands were far out of line with the consensus of the expedition. In fact the authority of a leader of an expedition does not depend on a scrap of paper, or even on a formal oath, but rather on the personality of the individual concerned. Climbers tend to be individualists, accustomed to taking their own decisions, and as a result they do not respond to authoritarian leadership. A group of two or four people climbing together in the Alps, or for that matter the Himalaya, does not need a formal leader, though interestingly enough someone nearly always emerges as a natural undeclared leader in any particular situation. With a larger group, however, particularly one where the members are scattered between different camps, some kind of positive co-ordination which is accepted by the other members of the party is necessary.
It is interesting to surmise how much stronger Herzog’s authority was in 1950 than that of the expedition leader of the eighties and nineties. The mood of the early fifties, even among mountaineers, was more amenable to the concept of authority than it is today. Even so, the morale of the team depended on very much the same ingredients as that of a modern expedition, and in this respect Herzog’s approach to leadership was similar to that of John Hunt on Everest in 1953 or my own today. He believed in keeping in close touch with the feelings of his team, took an active part in the climbing and yet, when it came to decision making, took them himself rather than put the question to the vote.
The first problem was to reach the base of Annapurna. On 15 May, Terray, Lachenal and Schatz, with three Sherpas, set out up the Miristi Khola. It is an incredible switchback along forest and scrub-covered terraces, around rocky bluffs, along a series of tenuously interconnecting ledges that weave their way between the dizzy snow-clad summits of the Nilgiri peaks and the dark gorge of the Miristi Khola, 1,500 metres below. They could barely hear the thunder of the torrent that hurtled down its bed, and then at last at the end of the switchback, a steep but easy couloir led down to the open sweep of the Annapurna Basin.
Annapurna was before them, but they still had to find a way up the mountain and the uncertainties weren’t over. By far the safest route seemed the North-West Ridge because of being free from avalanche danger, but it was long and gendarmed. Herzog once again wanted to recce every alternative, sending parties both to the ridge and the heavily glaciated North Face. The ridge proved to be more difficult than they had anticipated, while the face proved to be easy, though threatened by huge avalanches that came sweeping down it from a great sickle of ice cliffs above. So they accepted the dangers of the easier route. It was now 23 May; the monsoon would be upon them in another fortnight and most of the expedition baggage and part of the team were still scattered between Tukucha and their newly established Base below the mountain.
They wasted no time and started to push the route out in the manner that had already become customary on most Himalayan climbs. There are two ways of climbing a mountain: alpine style, where the climbers carry everything with them and make a single push towards the summit, bivouacking or camping as they go; or by siege tactics, where a series of camps are established up the mountain and all the gear needed to make a summit bid is slowly ferried upwards, the aim usually being to put two men into a top camp to make the summit bid. This pyramid approach was developed in the face of the great scale and altitude of the Himalaya, once climbers found that they were unable to carry everything they needed on their backs for a single push. The number of camps and the distance between them is determined by how far a man, usually a Sherpa, can ferry a load in a day. The Sherpas therefore filled a vital role in this siege approach to mountaineering. Ferrying loads is both exhausting and monotonous work; much pleasanter to pay someone else to do this, while the climbers concentrate on the exciting business of finding the route. On pre-war Everest expeditions the British climbers very rarely carried a load.
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 down 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 character. 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.