RIP Maurice Herzog

[26mi235]

Famed French mountaineer Maurice Herzog dies at 93:

There are enough climbing types here for this item; lived a long life.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/Famed-French-mountaineer-Maurice-Herzog-dies-at-93-4118390.php#ixzz2F3oa1QbO

French mountaineer Maurice Herzog, the first person to scale the 8,091-meter (26,545-foot) Annapurna peak, has died at the age of 93 [Also the first >8000m success in 1950

His book about the epic expedition, "Annapurna: The First Conquest of an 8,000-Meter Peak," was called "the most influential mountaineering book of all time"

[gh]

longtime IOC member too.

Reading Annapurna is pretty stirring stuff, particularly where you get to the part on the long train ride back to civilization where they leave the maggots on rotting feet so as to get rid of the dead flesh. As I recall, there's one part where they talk about clipping off chunks of toes every day, and sweeping them out the door of the train car when it stops at a station.

[Conor Dary]

Annapurna is a great book. However, there were a few problems with it.

http://www.amazon.com/True-Summit-Happe ... id+roberts

By the way, speaking of cold places....today is the 101st anniversary of Roald Amundsen and his Norwegian pals getting to the South Pole.

[KDFINE]

I'd wanted to comment at the time but I had computer or internet problems and couldn't. Am I the only one who saw the film of the expedition? I saw it on TV about 50 years ago. As I recall, maybe from the book, they lost a bit of the footage, that taken above a particular altitude, when Herzog, Larchanel, Terray and Rebuffat spent the night on the descent in the snow cave. I also recall that the film showed what GH already mentioned, the amputations and the sweeping of the digits off the train onto the platform. What came out eventually was that Herzog was more than a bit of a control freak. He certainly wasn't as good a climber as Larchanel, Terray or Rebuffat, nor was he ever as good as Couzy (sp?) eventually became. Herzog's book certainly was a classic and it had a great last line.