True Summit: What Really Happened on the Legendary Ascent of Annapurna

The climax of Maurice Herzog's mountaineering classic, Annapurna, is at the moment of descent, when Herzog and Louis Lachenal tumble from the 26,493-foot frozen summit. Herzog loses his gloves and the two barely reach camp with dead hands and feet. This is also the point where Herzog's tale falls apart, writes David Roberts, and it has taken nearly 50 years to uncover the real story behind the nationalist-tinged French expedition in 1950. Roberts, himself a climber of some accomplishment who admits to worshipping the heroics of the Annapurna team as a youth, traveled around the world interviewing friends and family of the team members (all deceased, save for Herzog), and chasing down original manuscripts and diaries of the three team members to get the story straight. His findings do not reveal the fearless, selfless leader Herzog painted himself to be in his famous book and subsequent writings.

Roberts reconstructs the trip to Annapurna beginning on the Heathrow runway: as the widowed Francoise Rebuffat recalls, Herzog required his highly experienced teammates--Louis Lachenal, Lionel Terray, and Gaston Rebuffat--to sign a contract that granted him full leadership of the expedition, along with rights to publish any and all accounts of the trip for five years following their return. Conflicting stories to Herzog's "official" account begin from that moment. Herzog writes of his team's indefatigable support and loyalty to their leader, but in reality discord nearly crippled the success of the climb. In order to preserve the reputation he built for himself in Annapurna, Herzog, throughout his life, censored any account of the trip authored by the other team members, even "editing" Lachenal's posthumously published climbing memoir, Carnets de Vertige.

While the dissection of Herzog's ego here is expected, Roberts discovers that none of his heroes are what he thought they were. "More rounded," he surmises, and ultimately better for it. Equal parts memoir, climbing lore, investigative journalism, and biography, Roberts provides the missing dimensions of the climb and the three extraordinary climber's lives--Lachenal, Terray, and Rebuffat--that Herzog so tirelessly strove to conceal. --Lolly Merrell