The Wetass Library: I’m on a major mountain climbing literature jag, and because there is a documentary which just hit the theaters am reading Joe Simpson’s Touching The Void. This is Simpson’s beautifully written account of crawling off a Peruvian mountain with a broken leg, after his climbing partner Simon Yates was forced to abandon him on the mountain to save his own life. It’s an incredible story. After pioneering a route up the remote Siula Grande, Simpson fell on the descent and shattered his knee. He knows instantly he is almost certainly dead and will probably never get off the mountain. But Yates tries to lower him down thousands of feet of steep, dangerous mountain face. Eventually, in the midst of a storm, Yates inadvertently lowers Simpson over an ice cliff. The rope is not long enough to get Simpson to the bottom, and he is too weak to climb back up to solid ground. Yates is locked into a belay seat carved out in the snow, holding Simpson’s full weight. Neither climber can move, and if something doesn’t change they will both freeze to death. Slowly, Yates’s belay seat starts to collapse underneath him. He has two choices: try to hang on and almost certainly be pulled off the mountain with Simpson; or, cut the rope. It is a brutal, brutal, dilemma. But Yates does what he has to do. He cuts the rope–knowing that he is almost certainly sending his friend and climbing partner falling to his death–because if he doesn’t the Siula Grande will kill two climbers instead of just one. Here’s Yates’ account in the book of what was going through his mind:

“The knife was in my sack…Fumbling at the catches on the rucksack I could feel the snow slowly giving way beneath me. Panic threatened to swamp me. I felt in the sack, desperately searching for the knife. My hand closed round something smooth and I pulled it out…It needed no pressure. The taut rope exploded at the touch of the blade, and I flew backwards into the seat as the pulling strain vanished. I was shaking…I was alive and for the moment that was all I could think about. Where Joe was, or whether he was alive, didn’t concern me in the long silence after the cutting. His weight had gone from me. There was only the wind and the avalanches left to me.”

And here was what Simpson was thinking at the same moment, as he dangled over a gaping crevasse:

“My torch beam died. The cold had killed the batteries. I saw stars in a dark gap above me. Stars, or lights in my hand…Then, what I had waited for pounced on me. The stars went out, and I fell. Like something come alive, the rope lashed violently against my face and I fell silently, endlessly into nothingness, as if dreaming of falling. I fell fast, faster than thought, and my stomach protested at the swooping speed of it. I swept down, and from above I saw myself falling and felt nothing. No thoughts, and all fears gone away. So this is it!”

Amazingly, Simpson survives a 100-foot fall. As he lies in the crevasse he pulls the rope end to him and sees that it has been cut. He understands. He is not bitter. He took his chances, and knew Yates had made a choice, the right choice. But he doesn’t give up. He manages to crawl and climb his way out of the crevasse, and drag himself over six miles or rough ground and glacial moraine to surprise Yates at their base camp, just hours before Yates was planning to pull out. A truly amazing story, and one in which Simpson and Yates face death with dispassion, courage, and brutal honesty. Can’t wait to see the movie (for a taste, download the trailer here)….



Touching The Void: An Epic Story of Courage, Friendship and Confronting Death In the Mountains