True Summit by David Roberts Page A

Azéma’s The Conquest of Fitzroy, which told the story of the 1952 first ascent of the hardest expeditionary mountain yet climbed anywhere in the world, Terray and Guido Magnone had solved nearly all the technical difficulties, only to be stumped by a short blank wall just below the summit. Out of pitons, they thrashed around, unable to solve the wall, until Terray cried, “Guido, the sardine tin!” Earlier that day, the pair had used a knife-blade “ace of spades” piton to pry open their sardine can. Terraydug the piton out of his rucksack, pounded it into a thin crack, aided the wall, and sprinted to the summit.
    In Conquistadors, Terray had devoted a long chapter to Annapurna. By and large, it complemented Herzog’s famous story, though Terray performed the invaluable service of following up on the lives and careers of the team members in the eleven years after the expedition. It seemed to Don and me that the cordée we idolized ought to have found its paired glory on the first 8,000-meter peak to be climbed. (The ideal plot would have had Terray and Lachenal going to the summit together.) Yet in neither Herzog’s Annapurna nor in Terray’s Conquistadors was there much evidence of that legendary partnership playing a pivotal role. The pairs and trios of climbers setting off to look for Dhaulagiri and Annapurna permutated relentlessly, as if Herzog were trying to keep strong bonds from forming among his team. The knights of the sky were in this sense interchangeable.
    Only a vignette here and there in the Annapurna chapter of Conquistadors hinted at the sense of twinned invincibility Lachenal and Terray had hammered out on the Walker Spur, the Piz Badile, the Eiger. On the long march in to Tukucha, the two guides were designated as the scouting party. Wrote Terray.
    Lachenal was also very interested by all that went on around us, but patience was never one of his characteristics, and he found my halts too frequent. When he got tired of waiting he would lope off on his own, and I would find him asleep under a banyan a few hours later.
    Seven weeks into the expedition, Terray reminded us, the team was plunged into despair. The most vigorous possible reconnaissance of Dhaulagiri had deemed the mountain virtually unclimbable. Time was running out.
    On May 14, the whole team assembled once more in Tukucha. In the mess tent, Herzog presided over what he called “a solemn council of war.” He gave a speech, summarizing the expedition’s discoveries. A freewheeling discussion ensued. No one had any heart to pursue further approaches to Dhaula; Terray, the strongest member, was the most vehemently opposed. One by one, the teammatesturned their thoughts to Annapurna, which still lay hidden in a haze of topographical ignorance.
    By the end of that discussion, the die was cast. Ever the loyalist, Terray summarized the fateful moment:
    Maurice Herzog hesitated before the choice. Should he abandon a prize, however doubtful, in favor of a mystery so insubstantial? Could he expose men who had taken their oath to obey him to mortal danger? In full awareness of his terrible responsibility Maurice chose the more reasonable but uncertain course: we would attempt Annapurna.

FOUR
Breakthrough

    T HE I NDIAN S URVEY MAPS were every bit as confused about Annapurna as they were about Dhaulagiri. As the team, running out of time, turned its attention to this second 8,000-meter objective, it had little notion of where to begin. In 1961, Lionel Terray would recall:
    Annapurna . . . remained a complete enigma. We had seen the mountain from afar off, lording it over groves of seven-thousanders, but the closer we got to it the hazier our ideas of its topography became, for all our painstaking reconnaissances.
    The parties scouting Dhaulagiri had run head-on into one impasse after another. Now, however, Herzog and his companions stumbled upon some good luck.
    In late April, as they had ascended