Annapurna

In the year 1950, a strong group of French climbers entered into the forbidden land of Nepal with unheard of permission from the Maharajah to explore some their remote Himalayan mountains. At the time, their maps were inaccurate, travel was primitive, and all odds were against them in the short climbing season before the monsoon rains. After many weeks of exploration, all hope was vanquished for an attempt on Dhaulagiri and the entire expedition's force was finally focused on the Annapurna Massif. With little time left before the torrential rains began, an attack was mounted and the first 8000m peak conquered. Reaching the summit though came with severe consequences.

The tale of the first Ascent of Annapurna, as told by Maurice Herzog in his book titled the same as the mountain he scaled, is the best-selling mountaineering book of all time. In it, Herzog reveals the complexities of the time in traveling into unknown areas during the beginning of the golden age of mountaineering. These were the times of enormous expeditions sieging the mountains with a train of several hundred porters to carry several months worth of supplies.

With the objective of climbing Annapurna and Dhaulagiri, both one of the 14 few 8000 meter peaks in the Himalayas, their first task was to explore the area using a rudimentary map. After more than a month with little to no progress, it was determined that Dhaulagiri was beyond there means and a route up Annapurna was their last resort to success. It was found that their map that they used for navigation was woefully inaccurate, so all the expeditions forces concentrated on solving the riddle of approaching the mountain.

After successfully finding a weakness on the North side of the mountain, the team gathered at their advanced base-camp to begin the attack. What follows is several weeks of route finding and backtracking that found them high on the mountain poised for a summit attempt. The consequences of this final successful push to the top are highlighted in the final chapters describing the harrowing descent and retreat. This describes in vivid detail the severity of the frostbite received by Herzog and Lachenal which cost both of them all their toes and, in Herzog's case, several fingers. So severe was their conditions that their expedition doctor had to perform amputations in the field so that the gangrene did not spread.

Annapurna, as written by Maurice Herzog, captures some of the essence of exploration that in modern times has been lost. The willpower needed to travel into unknown territory, where the abilities of man have yet to be tested, shows how heroic these times were compared to modern mountaineering. For any mountain or adventure enthusiast, this book will take it's place proudly on the shelves with other such classics of Epic proportions.