True Summit definitely read like we had already discussed earlier this semester. But it is helpful to bring to light just how inaccurate Herzog’s account of climbing Annapurna actually was. It gives more truth to Herzog’s quote about Annapurna, “Annapurna is a sort of novel. It’s a novel, but a true novel.” True Summit shows just how inconsistent and hard to believe Maurice Herzog actually was.

But I think even more than that, it points to how much conflict and disunity there actually was on the expedition. The book helps show that the people on the expedition were all people, with differing opinions and different ideas on how things should be done. The entire expedition was much more different than the peaceful time that Herzog puts forth, where everyone easily follows orders and they do not get so worked up over his decisions. In fact, I think it shows that at some times, it would have been better to have more democracy, or to at least acknowledge that these others on the trek were just as smart, if not more so in some situations, and that the expedition sometimes needed more from everyone than just submission. I think this becomes especially true as Roberts considers the descent after Lachenal and Herzog summit Annapurna. There, the leadership of Terray was needed far more than listening to Herzog, as Terray seems to have been on of the only ones so high up on the mountain that was able to function and think correctly, in order to do what had to be done to save the lives of the others. But along with that, Lachenal’s commitment to follow orders, even when his feet were freezing to frostbite shows that they were still, most of all, committed to save lives, whether that was by following, like Lachenal on the summit push, that would have probably killed Herzog if Lachenal did not stay with him, or by taking charge to save lives, like Terray had to do.

True Summit speaks well to an aspect of mountaineering that can be overlooked pretty easily. The unity of a group. Unity, I think True Summit points to, is a lot harder to keep together than Herzog puts forth in Annapurna. Sometimes people just do not get along. Herzog’s account fails to consider that, and Roberts does a good job of bringing that to life. That seems to be the most silenced thing in Herzog’s Annapurna, that the group was not always as cohesive as previously described. I think this shows just how important unity is in mountaineering. Without a doubt, high-altitude mountaineering is difficult and dangerous if the group of climbers is not in unity, and perhaps, to Herzog this was so important to what he thought was the success of the expedition, that it had to be silenced to make the famous ascent even more successful in his eyes.