Louis Lachenal, French mountaineer (died 1955)

Louis Lachenal, a French climber born in Annecy, Haute-Savoie, was one of the first two mountaineers to climb a summit of more than 8,000 meters. On 3 June 1950 on the 1950 French Annapurna expedition, along with Maurice Herzog, he reached the summit of Annapurna I in Nepal at a height of 8,091 m (26,545 ft). Previously he had made the second ascent of the North Face of the Eiger in 1947, with Lionel Terray. He died falling into a snow-covered crevasse while skiing the Vallee Blanche in Chamonix. The mountain Pointe Lachenal in the Mont Blanc massif was named after him.