1950 French Annapurna expedition
After failing to climb Dhaulagiri I at 8,167 metres (26,795 ft), the higher peak nearby to the west, the team attempted Annapurna with Herzog and Louis Lachenal, reaching the summit on 3 June 1950.
The feat was a great achievement for French mountaineering and caught the public imagination with front-page coverage in a best-selling issue of Paris Match.
Herzog wrote a best-selling book Annapurna full of vivid descriptions of heroic endeavour and anguished suffering – but which much later was criticised for being too self-serving.
[14] Lucien Devies [fr], the most influential person in French mountaineering,[note 5] was responsible for gathering together a team and he chose Maurice Herzog, an experienced amateur climber, to be the leader of the expedition.
[note 6] Accompanying him were to be three younger Chamonix professional mountain guides, Louis Lachenal, Lionel Terray and Gaston Rébuffat, and two amateurs Jean Couzy and Marcel Schatz [fr].
[21] They took 3.5 tons of supplies which included ropes and outer clothing of nylon, down-filled jackets and felt-lined leather boots with rubber soles – all innovative equipment.
[note 10] Couzy climbed a 4,000-metre (13,000 ft) Nilgiri peak to the east of Tukusha to inspect the eastern Dhaulagiri terrain and he concluded the southeast ridge was "absolutely frightful".
[28] Starting from Tukusha, the climbers Lachenal and Rébuffat headed for an initial exploration of Dhaulagiri's eastern glacier, while Herzog, Terray and Ichac went to the north where they found their 1920s map was seriously defective (see above).
[32] During this Dhaulagiri reconnaissance, Schatz, Couzy, Oudot and Ang Tharkay had been back south to explore the deep canyon of the Miristi Kola river.
[30] Ichac and Ang Tharkay stayed back to do accurate surveying and to climb north to a point at about 6,200 metres (20,300 ft) on a ridge, hoping the see the mountain over the Great Barrier – but everywhere was shrouded in mist.
Two teams moved up the spur, a feat of considerable technical climbing,[note 12] but even after repeated attempts over five days they were unable to get higher than about 6,000 metres (20,000 ft).
[38][43][note 13] Meantime Lachenal and Rébuffat on their own initiative had moved round the foot of the spur to below Annapurna's north face, to a point they decided gave the best prospects for success.
[45] Compared with the northwest spur, the north face of Annapurna is at a relatively low angle and does not require rock climbing skills, but the risk of avalanches makes it extremely dangerous.
[60][61] This unselfish act by Terray led to Herzog (who had acclimatised the best[13]) and Lachenal, accompanied by Ang Tharkay and Sarki, being the ones who set out from Camp II on 31 May for an attempt on the summit.
[64] Not understanding that being at high altitude without additional oxygen induces apathy, in a severe gale the climbers spent the night without eating anything or sleeping, and in the morning they did not bother lighting their stove to make hot drinks.
[71][note 18] After about an hour on the summit, not waiting for Herzog in his euphoric state to load another roll of film, Lachenal set off back down at a furious pace.
[76] At Camp V he was met by Terray and Rébuffat who had brought up a second tent hoping to make their own summit attempt the next day[note 19] and who were horrified at the state of Herzog's frostbitten hands.
Needing to hurry before the monsoon made the Miristi Kola impassable through flooding, they reached Camp I as the sky clouded over and heavy rains started.
They had hoped to follow the river down to where it joined the Kali Gandaki but a reconnaissance showed this would be impossible and so they were forced to climb the Nilgiri ridge to return the way they had come.
[94][86] Because it was the rice planting season porters were abandoning the expedition all the time and it became impossible to find new recruits so they felt forced to adopt press gang tactics to be able to keep going.
[97] The telegram giving news of the success was reported by Le Figaro on 16 June but it was only on 17 July that the team arrived home at Orly Airport in Paris to be greeted by a wildly cheering crowd.
[note 23][86][102] On 17 February 1951 Paris Match again ran the expedition on its front cover, this time focusing on the cinema premiere (attended by the President of France) of the film made by Ichac.
[106] In June 2000, the French national postal services issued a 3 franc stamp (0.46 euro) celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the climb, designed by Jean-Paul Cousin and engraved by André Lavergne.
After speaking to many of the people involved who were still alive,[note 25] in 2000 David Roberts, the American mountaineer and writer, published True Summit, discussing the whole issue.
[106] All the royalties from the publication (in France it remained the best-selling work of non-fiction for nearly a year) went to the Himalayan Committee and were used to fund future expeditions – in a direct sense Herzog did not benefit financially at all.
Time wrote that the first half was like "a boy camper's letter to a chum" but what followed was a "harrowing ordeal-by-nature calculated to shiver the spirit of the toughest armchair explorer.
[128] Terray's 1961 book, Les conquérants de l'inutile[129][note 27] (published in English as "The Conquistadors of the Useless") included a long chapter about the Annapurna expedition.
[138] When in 1951 Lachenal had told Rébuffat that when he had been considering publishing an account of the expedition, someone from the official Himalayan Committee had threatened him that he might lose his job at the École Nationale de Ski et d'Alpinisme.
"[154][155][note 32] La Montagne et Alpinisme, however, considered there was too much fuss: five-year embargoes were normal in 1950 and the distinction between professional guides and amateur climbers had lost any significance by that time.
They also found that, despite rumours that several mountaineers had been seriously injured, their wives waiting anxiously at home were told nothing by Devies because of the exclusive publication contract with Le Figaro and Paris Match.
