Free True Summit by David Roberts

let’s go, it’s over.”
    In adulthood, Lachenal wrote memorably about the appeal of risk:
    Definition: a taste for risk is inborn and later made rational. For certain men, it is a necessity. It is the desire to perfect oneself, to raise oneself, to attain an ideal. It implies a taste for responsibility. Mastery of oneself and conquest of fear.
    Louis grew up as a choirboy and, starting at thirteen, as a scout; yet he was at the same time not far from what in America would be called a juvenile delinquent. While still young, he acquired a taste for the sharp cider of Savoie, known as biscantin in the local patois. “Biscante” became Lachenal’s lifelong nickname, the moniker by which his teammates addressed him on Annapurna.
    From his first hikes with fellow scouts onward, Louis was obsessed with mountains. When he cornered an elder who had real climbing experience, he would bombard him with earnest questions: Was Whymper a guide? Was Lochmatter? Were there no French guides? What was the name of the mountain in this photograph? How high?
    On a small crag overlooking Annecy, Lachenal and a few chums taught themselves to climb. For a rope, they borrowed the halyard with which their scout troop hoisted its flag; for shoes, they wore “sneakers,” soled with woven cord rather than rubber. From an early age, Louis was a born craftsman. One day his pals found him shod in what looked an expensive pair of after-ski boots. Where had he gotten them?
    â€œI made them myself,” he answered proudly.
    â€œWith what?”
    â€œWith my hands.”
    â€œBut the leather?”
    â€œI found an old scrap that I reworked.”
    â€œAnd the soles?”
    â€œSome old satchels.”
    From his first leads on rock onward, Louis was so much more agile and skilled than any of his friends that they were dazzled by his technique. At the age of sixteen, he bicycled to Chamonix, where the giants of the Mont Blanc massif smote him, just as they had Terray at an even earlier age. Two years later, with a childhood friend, still innocent of any formal training, Lachenal rashly undertook an ascent of the Grépon. The pair survived a descent in a furious storm and a bivouac in the snow. His friend never climbed again.
    Louis grew up thin and lanky, with powerful shoulders. His hairline began to recede in his twenties, though he never become as bald as Terray. He wore his intensity in his narrow face. Gradually over the years, a look almost of anguish printed itself on his countenance: the high forehead and the sensuous lips were dominated by the fixed arch of his eyebrows, a perpetual frown on his brow.
    One of Louis’s adolescent playmates was Adèle Rivier, a tomboy who climbed and camped with the best of them, notwithstandingthe overprotective instincts of her parents. Once Louis and Adèle fell in love, the parents grew more and more vigilant. Her father was an important engineer in Annecy, descended from an aristocratic Swiss family. Though he treated Louis with a certain stern kindness, it was clear that he did not expect his daughter to marry the son of a grocer.
    The obstacles to their romance, like the challenge of sneaking into a movie theater, only made Lachenal’s passion keener. Meeting furtively, the pair courted, then secretly affianced. Suspecting something, M. Rivier called Lachenal to account and acerbically cross-examined the séducteur.
    In 1939, as he turned eighteen, a series of events threw Lachenal’s life into upheaval. He and Adèle passed their baccalauréat together, but suddenly her father died. His passing only stiffened Mme. Rivier’s opposition to her daughter’s match: now she forbade Adèle all contact with Louis.
    The war broke out in early autumn. No one went climbing. Casting about for a métier, Louis worked desultorily in his parents’ shop, went for long walks in the mountains alone, and fell into a kind of bitterness that alarmed