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

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

Book Description
The first conquest ever made of an 8,000-meter peak occurred in June 1950, when a French team reached the summit of Annapurna in the Himalaya. The achievement was a source of great pride in postwar France, and the expedition leader, Maurice Herzog, became a national hero. His account of the expedition, Annapurna, remains to this day the best-selling mountaineering book ever.

But there is more to this story than Herzog's book reveals. Annapurna is one man's version of a triumph that came at a tragic cost, as Herzog lost all his fingers and toes to frostbite, his partner Louis Lachenal all his toes. The book describes a valiant effort by a unified, self-sacrificing team. The reality, however, was otherwise. The expedition was torn by dissent. The honors heaped on Herzog were not shared by the other climbers, some of whom deserved them as much as their leader. In truth, the triumph of the expedition was all the more remarkable, and the story of what really happened is far richer than Annapurna suggests.

In place of Maurice Herzog's idealized version of the conquest, David Roberts offers in True Summit the real story of the Annapurna expedition. Drawing on original manuscripts and letters, some of them unpublished, as well as books recently published in France, he gives the three superb climbers who accompanied Herzog -- Lachenal, Lionel Terray, and Gaston Rebuffat -- long overdue recognition for their achievement. At the same time, he has interviewed Herzog, the lone survivor among the climbers, and puts his account of the climb in proper perspective.

Annapurna fired the imaginations of millions of readers, including thousands of young climbers, the author among them. Roberts writes about the effect that the book had on him and other climbers he knew. He explains why it has taken nearly fifty years for the full story of this famous expedition to emerge and how the revelations will change forever the way we think about this victory in the mountains and the climbers who achieved it.

My advice is to go through the bibliography at the end, and to follow writings of the expedition members.


Revealing glimpse of human nature   December 4, 2001
 4 out of 5 found this review helpful

I was pointed toward True Summit by a friend who previously loaned me his copy of Annapurna. Although Herzog made the occasional gracious nod to the contributions of his teammates in Annapurna, overall that account struck me as flat and highly impersonal, almost third-person (even though it was autobiographical!). I found Herzog's raptures on the summit more bizarre than uplifting.

True Summit added a whole new richness to the Annapurna story. To me, this book was not so much a "debunking" of Herzog's account, as much as filling out the missing dimension. Here, the climbers become real people with individual passions, foibles, and remarkable skills. Clearly Herzog's version diminished the accomplishments of his teammates, but might we say that the end (national pride and financial support for future expeditions) at least partially justified the means (a highly idealized account of the climb -- essentially a propaganda tool)? I particularly was fascinated by the differences between Herzog's initial rendition of the climb and his later "spiritual" retelling -- and both of those stories contrasted against the diaries and conversations of Lachenal, Terray, and Rebuffat. If one man (Herzog) could convince himself of a new version of "truth" -- even in the face of HIS OWN written account! -- then why should we be surprised that the four eyewitnesses have different stories?

Roberts' overlay of his own climbing history onto the Annapurna story sometimes struck me as self-congratulatory while I read the book. Would this have been as strong a book without Roberts' own story? Maybe so, but I think what he's trying to say is that Herzog was both a great man and a small man during the Annapurna climb... and so were the others. To worship any one of the Annapurna climbers (as Roberts did, one after another) is perhaps to blind ourselves to our own strengths and weaknesses.

I think the best way to sum up is to say that Herzog's Annapurna was a good story, but True Summit really made me think about teamwork, leadership, and the nature of the "truth" that we tell ourselves and the world.


Annapurna, Considered   August 20, 2001
 13 out of 21 found this review helpful

"Annapurna" by Maurice Herzog, is the best-selling mountaineering book ever written. The feat of being the first man to climb an 8,000-meter mountain is a matter of great pride to France and to all the people of France. Now what if the story was not true? What if Mr. Herzog's tale was full of lies and deceits? What if you wrote a book exposing these falsities and set the record straight? If that is what you are expecting, you bought the wrong book.

Mr. Roberts, in this slim book, definitively shows that:

1. Maurice Herzog was a fine climber, an idealist, a leader of men, and a gracious individual who was very partial to publicity and glory.

2. Louis Lachenal, who summitted with Mr. Herzog, did not get his share of the credit.

3. The profits from "Annapurna" went to Club Alpin Francois. None of the team members, including Mr. Herzog, received any monetary benefits from the book's publication.

4. Fellow members Lionel Terray and Gaston Rebuffat were absolutely indispensable to the success of the climb. Their bravery and generosity were extraordinary.

Other reviewers have mentioned that one must read "Annapurna" before reading this book. I did so, and found it highly readable, spirited and Mr. Herzog's enthusiasm shows through every page. I thought a lot of the book was taken up by just finding a route to the mountain, but all in all, an interesting read. Most of the points Mr. Roberts makes are implied in "Annapurna." Though there is no denying Louis Lachenal is the forgotten man.

Mr. Roberts makes a large point of how all team members were forbidden by contract to write a book about the expedition for five years. These rights were given solely to Maurice Herzog. Such a contract is common to this day for large sponsored expeditions. The only reason we have had such a plethora of books starting with "Into Thin Air" about the 1996 Everest expedition is because there were no corporate or government sponsors for that trip.

The book leaves a bad taste. It smacks of profiteering by unfairly dragging down Maurice Herzog who does not deserve it. Not recommended.


Corrects A Distorted Record   March 6, 2001
 18 out of 19 found this review helpful

I am not a climber and I enjoyed this book. The story that is shared is about human faults that can be applied to a variety of experiences, they are not limited to events on the world's great mountains. I was also drawn to the book, as it was a discussion of the first climbers to summit the mountain, and a climber on the fatal Everest 1996 died on the same mountain, Annapurna.

Mr. David Roberts did a nice job of bringing the reader along and sharing the climb and the distorted history that followed. More importantly he helped to reinforce what appears to be the truth about the climb, and to apportion credit as it should have been done so many decades ago.

I have read several accounts of the 1996 Everest expedition that caused so much loss of life, and to my surprise so much finger pointing by those who survived the ordeal. Many memories seemed to be influenced by the mental strain the mountain causes in climbers at the highest altitudes, but some seemed to persist even when photographs contradicted a given Author's statement. The climbers in 1996 had experienced guides and protective clothing that the first climbers on Annapurna would have thought to be the creation of science fiction. So, as Mr. Roberts began his story it seemed to be a case of memories created when badly injured bodies, and oxygen-deprived minds had left gaps. Even on the miserable trek back, people using morphine and suffering amputations, and dozens of other tortures recounted much of the originally published story.

Just as human nature was able to overcome hideous physical events, it too was able to distort the record for the benefit of one man at the expense of others who climbed with him, attained the summit with him, and saved his life. The beneficiary of the distortions was alive and interviewed for this book, and it was those interviews, combined with the evidence proving the true story that made this correcting of the historical record so important.

Mr. Maurice Herzog clearly intended for the historical outcome he contrived, and that nearly became the permanent record, to be the only record. From the oath he administered to his "teammates" to his continuing denial of the facts, and his refusal to allow access to records that further document the truth, Mr. Herzog took what was a group success that could have been nothing other than positive, and distorted it into a personal fantasy that provided him a lifetime of security which he had no more right to than the other men he climbed with. He would not allow the Author to print a picture of the other man who made the top with him, how vain, petty, and pathetic.

It would be convenient to say an old man's memory is faulty, but as he demonstrated himself, Mr. Herzog may indeed be advanced in years, but he is what he was, a pathetic self promoter that fictionalized an event that was extraordinary, it needed no embellishment, and the triumph certainly did not need to be the domain of one vain individual.


An amazing book   September 27, 2000
 13 out of 14 found this review helpful

True Summit is an amazing book, both as a climbing book and as a work of historical scholarship. It exposes a web of dishonesty surrounding the classic account of the first ascent of Annapurna. Some scenes are provocative of outrage, as when Roberts describes the editorial notes -- "Wrong", "This must be changed" -- made by Herzog and Devies on Lachenal's diary. Throughout, Roberts intersperses scenes from his own mountaineering career, which add immediacy and human interest. One nitpick I had was that, as a writer of history, Roberts should really have given a definitive list of sources and referenced his quotes. More importantly, I felt that he never really sums up his arguments. Why was Herzog's Annapurna the whitewashed version that it apparently was? Were the reasons nationalistic, class (amateur versus guide), personal? What can these events tell us about mountaineering as a whole? These are questions which Roberts does not really address. Still, this is a fascinating book and I certainly recommend it.