Annapurna Read Free

events, give it a striking authenticity. For the first time, we are all members of a Himalayan expedition, we are all present beside the leader and the rest of the party. You are taking us with you, too, my dear Maurice, to the very end – to the end of the ordeal, to the end of an almost unbelievable experience
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    It is impossible to read these pages without being overwhelmed by the sensitive awareness, and the kindliness, that went with so much courage and such dogged determination
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    Thank you for being so well aware that one can put aside modesty without becoming vain. If it were not so, then every advance of the spirit would go unrecorded. It takes courage to draw the veil from those moments when the individual approaches most nearly to the universal
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    That wonderful world of high mountains, dazzling in their rock and ice, acts as a catalyst. It suggests the infinite, but it is not the infinite. The heights only give us what we ourselves bring to them. Climbing is a means of self-expression. Its justification lies in the men it develops, its heroes and its saints. This was the essential truth which a whole nation grasped when it offered its praise and admiration to the conquerors of Annapurna. Man overcomes himself, affirms himself, and realizes himself in the struggle towards the summit, towards the absolute. In the extreme tension of the struggle, on the frontier of death, the universe disappears and drops away beneath us. Space, time, fear, suffering, no longer exist. Everything then becomes quite simple. As on the crest of a wave, or in the heart of a cyclone, we are strangely calm – not the calm of emptiness, but the heart of action itself. Then we know with absolute certainty that there is something indestructible in us, against which nothing shall prevail
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    A flame so kindled can never be extinguished. When we have lost everything it is then we find ourselves most rich. Was it this certainty that all was well that gave Maurice Herzog the steady courage to endure his ordeal?
    The summit is at our feet. Above the sea of golden clouds other summits pierce the blue and the horizon extends to infinity
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    The summit we have reached is no longer the Summit. The fulfilment of oneself – is that the true end, the final answer?
    LUCIEN DEVIES
    Président du Comité de l’Himalaya
    et de la Fédération Française de la Montagne

1
    Preparations
    THE DAY FIXED for our departure was close at hand. Should we ever manage to get everything done? The entire personnel of the French Alpine Club was mobilized. The lights burned late into the night at No 7 rue La Boétie; there was a tremendous sense of excitement, and the Himalayan Committee sat nearly every evening. At nine o’clock, punctual to the minute, these people, upon whom at this stage the fate of the Expedition depended, would arrive, and vital decisions were taken at their secret councils: it is the Committee which settles the budget, foresees contingencies, weighs up the risk and, finally, chooses the members of the expedition.
    The names of the members of the party had been known for a few days. I was to have a splendid team. The youngest member was the tall and aristocratic Jean Couzy, aged 27; he had been a brilliant student at the École Polytechnique and was now an aeronautical engineer. He had not long been married but had not hesitated to leave his young wife, Lise. A quiet man, with a faraway look in his eyes, he always seemed to be turning over in his mind the latest problems of electronics.
    Couzy’s usual climbing partner, Marcel Schatz, was going with us too. He was two years older than his friend, of a heavier build, and always well turned out, for the very good reason that he was manager of one of his father’s prosperous tailoring establishments. He liked efficient organization, order and method. Whenever a bivouac was needed on a climb he was always the one to set to and get it ready. As he was unmarried, and an ardent climber, there was nothing