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game,” he later wrote, “we grew weary of shooting at men who were unable to defend themselves and withdrew, satisfied at having carried out our mission.”
    After a pivotal alpine battle at Pointe de Clairy, Terray “went back down to the valley through the peaceful forests full of disgust.” The battle had given him an epiphany.
    Spring was beginning to burgeon. Creamy snowdrops speckled the ground, and the air was full of odors evoking peace and love. As I descended through this poetic landscape I realized that the hell I had just left, in which so many men had meaninglessly lost their lives, could never again have anything in common with the naively sporting game I had played through the winter months. The whole abomination of war was suddenly and overwhelmingly apparent to me.
    In the summer of 1945, with Europe at peace for the first time in six years, Terray went climbing with Lachenal. On the very first route they shared, Terray was awestruck at Lachenal’s technique:
    I began to admire his extraordinary ease of movement. Whether on ice or on snowed-up, loose rocks, he already gave proof of that disconcerting facility, that feline elegance which was to make him the greatest mountaineer of his generation.
    The first major accomplishment for the pair came the next day, with the second ascent of the east face of the Moine. To their surprise, Terray and Lachenal reached the summit by midday. They basked in sun on top, staring across at the 4,000-foot north face of the Grandes Jorasses. That very day, they knew, Rébuffat was attemptingthe second ascent of the Walker Spur with Edouard Frendo.
    They discussed Gaston’s chances on the imposing route, rating them at well less than fifty-fifty. They spoke in hushed tones of the dazzling deeds of Ricardo Cassin, who had pioneered the Walker in 1938. At the time, both Terray and Lachenal were twenty-four years old.
    If Rébuffat succeeded, Terray tentatively mused, he might be interested in having a crack at the Walker himself. “But the great problem is to find someone to go with . . . would you be interested?”
    Lachenal was dizzied by the idea. “Are you kidding? The Walker’s my dream. But do you think I’m up to it? I haven’t done much yet.”
    â€œYou may not have done much, but I’ve been watching you these last two days. You’re a natural, it’s enough to make anybody jealous. Done. If they get up, we’ll have a shot.”
    In that moment, the partnership was forged.
    L IONEL T ERRAY WAS BORN IN 1921, the same year as Rébuffat and Lachenal, in Grenoble. His parents were grands bourgeois with instinctively aristocratic tastes. Terray’s father had started a chemical engineering business in Brazil, grown modestly rich, and at the age of forty chucked his job in industry for a career in medicine. Terray’s mother had studied painting and made some ambitious horseback trips into the Brazilian wilderness.
    The family house, a ramshackle three-story château in the oldest part of Grenoble, backed up against the limestone spur at whose foot the town spreads. It made a halcyon playground for young Lionel. “I grew there almost without constraint,” he wrote in 1961, “running through the woods, clambering the rocks, trapping rabbits, foxes, and rats, shooting blackbirds, thrushes, sparrows and sparrowhawks.” Using guns and knives his parents had brought back from Brazil, Lionel played cowboys and Indians with his schoolmates in the woods. With one friend, Terray skinned the rats he had trapped, dried and tanned the hides, then sewed theminto “picturesque costumes which, we hoped, resembled those of Attila’s Huns.”
    Terray’s parents had been avid skiers, his father the first Frenchman to master the telemark turn. But when Lionel showed an interest in climbing, they voiced a withering disapproval. “It’s a stupid sport,” said his