Despite the dozens, if not hundreds, of mountaineering tales that talk about the ‘conquest’ of mountains, especially the fourteen eight-thousanders that are the world’s tallest mountains, no one ‘conquers’ them. Not the mountaineers who climbed them first, who ‘deflowered’ their ‘virginity,’; not the ones who climb them by new routes, each selected to be harderContinue reading “No One ‘Conquers’ An Eight-Thousander”
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Of Annapurnas and Men: Maurice Herzog’s Epic Lives On
Just over sixty-four years ago, on June 3rd 1950, a pair of French mountaineers, Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal, stood on the summit of Annapurna, the world’s tenth highest peak. It was the first time mountaineers had succeeded in climbing a peak above eight thousand meters altitude. The French pair’s trials and travails were notContinue reading “Of Annapurnas and Men: Maurice Herzog’s Epic Lives On”
Samir Chopra 