PARIS - France loved him for his indefatigable, pioneering spirit - the first man to conquer an 8,000-meter Himalayan peak despite losing all his fingers and toes to frostbite.
Six decades after his 1950 Annapurna climb made Maurice Herzog a household name, the famed French mountaineer died Friday at age 93.
The statement from the Élysée Palace said he died in France but gave no further details.
Herzog had lived just outside Paris.
A photograph of Herzog waving a French tricolor atop the 26,545-foot peak in Nepal captured a seminal moment before the grueling descent, during which subzero conditions led to the amputation of all his fingers and toes.
"The marks of the ordeal are apparent on my body," he later said.
Although the 1953 ascent of Mount Everest - by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay somewhat eclipsed Herzog's achievement, Annapurna was not scaled again for some 20 years.
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Although Everest is the highest mountain in the world, Annapurna was said to be the most dangerous.
His book about the epic expedition, "Annapurna: The First Conquest of an 8,000-Meter Peak," was called "the most influential mountaineering book of all time" by National Geographic Adventure and made Sports Illustrated's list of the top 100 sports books of all time.
It has sold millions of copies - the International Olympic Committee said more than 20 million copies - and has been translated into dozens of languages.
"In overstepping our limitations, in touching the extreme boundaries of man's world, we have come to know something of its true splendor," Herzog wrote in the book.
The IOC expressed sympathy to Herzog's family. He had been an honorary member of the IOC since 1995, after some 25 years as an active member.
Herzog was "a great figure of the mountains," said Sophie Dion, a deputy in the French parliament from Herzog's much-loved home region in the Alps.
As a symbol of the place he occupied in collective French hearts, Herzog was decorated with the Grand Cross in France's Legion of Honor last year, the country's highest civilian honor.
Annapurna is ranked the 10th-highest peak in the world and has been described as the "world's deadliest peak."
Up to 2009, 60 climbers had died on Annapurna, according to climbing statistics on the 8000ers.com website, for a fatality rate of around 40 percent.