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Annapurna: 50 Years of Expeditions in the Death Zone

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This is a book about the first successful ascent of an 8000+ meter peak, Annapurna, possibly the world's most dangerous mountain in that many routes remained unclimbed until 20 or 30 years later. As Messner poignantly points out, perhaps more people have died attempting to climb Annapurna than have succeeded in climbing it.

Messner captures the drama and excitement as well as the grueling hardships and dangers the team experienced on the expedition, a French team of nine men lead by Maurice Herzog. Despite its brilliant success, Herzog became a controversial figure and was roundly criticized by others and in the press in the wake of the climb because of his style of leadership and some other personality quirks.

Messner gives a detailed account of the expedition and the controversy surrounding it, and concludes that Herzog's leadership and single-mindedness of purpose was still essential to the group's success. Herzog is the only member of the original expedition still alive, the other eight having died in later climbing accidents and one in a car crash. As if to further highlight the dangers of the mountain, one photo shows a rock outcropping where the names of nine people who died in the late 70s and early 80s are chiseled into the rock as a sort of memorial.

One of the more interesting aspects of the book were the discussions between the mountaineers about strategy and how to analyze the various possible routes for dangers. On one face of Annapurna that was being considered, one possible route up lay along a scalloped section of the face wall. However, that would have the effect funnelling all the avalanches right into that area of the face, which was the one they were considering using as part of their new route. Messner recounts this discussion from his own expedition which was successful.

Messner also discusses several of the other ascents since and why they were important, such as the conquering of a new, dangerous route up the mountain, and the expeditions of Chris Bonnington, Erhard Loretan, and Messner himself. Messner also points out that by the time of his ascent in 1985, the team leader (which was himself) was more a builder of group consensus rather than the Napoleonic-like dictator with absolute power that Herzog and others had been in their day.

Since 1950 there have been 120 expeditions to Annapurna. There is an appendix with a list of all of them along with brief descriptions. The more important ones get a paragraph or so, and the key expeditions are discussed in their own sections in the text, as I mentioned above. Overall, a very interesting and dramatic account of the history of moutaineering on one of the world's highest and most dangerous peaks.

This is, surprisingly, in great measure a defense, fifty years later, of the actions taken by Maurice Herzog in leading the first successful attempt on Annapurna -- at that time the only 8000-meter peak to be successfully climbed. Messner's is a well informed perspective, having the benefit of climbing hundreds of peaks of the course of a career as what many would consider the finest mountaineer, living or dead. He climbs without many of the expected modern conveniences, such as bottled oxygen, and thus has a better grasp than most on what an 8000-meter climb in 1950 must have looked like to those involved.

Granted, his defense of Herzog's behavior in 1950 and following is informed by the similarities between his own experiences and Herzog's. Both have dealt with a high volume of criticism and have parlayed their fame into both political and literary success, which escape most of their peers. Still, this book is not what I had expected: the consummate mountaineer (Messner) spending paragraph after paragraph extolling the virtues, drive and leadership of someone who seems to have arrived at his success somewhat illegitimately, not as an accomplished climber or mountaineer at all. Messner's language is too grandiose, too obsequious to be taken seriously ("congratulations, M. Annapurna!", for example).

After 80 pages, Messner turns to other ascents of Annapurna, including his own successful 1985 expedition that led to the first successful ascent of the Northwest Face, an enormous, 3000-meter wall of ice and rock. This was climbed in his usual way, with a relatively small group of climbers, each with a hand in advancing the climb. In total, though it had been fifty years from the French ascent to the time of this book's writing in 2000, 120 expeditions had put 106 people on top of Annapurna, while over 50 had lost their lives. It's not a long history, and Annapurna is no Everest, no tourist mountain for high-paying thrill-seekers or TV shows. But what a beautiful area, a lovely set of peaks rising from the Kali Gandaki where so many Nepalis live and so many tourists walk.