Touching the Void
Wow.
I doubt I could ever do what Joe Simpson does over the pages of this book.
While climbing the 20,000+ foot tall Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes, Joe Simpson falls and breaks his leg. He and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, work out a system that gets them most of the way down the mountain in 300 foot intervals. But as they near the base of the mountain, Yates is forced to cut the rope in order to save is own life.
Simpson falls 100 feet and miraculously lands on a ledge about 50 feet down a crevasse. The crevasse looks bottomless, and Yates has no reason to believe that Joe survived the fall, so he returns to camp alone.
Somehow, Simpson finds the strength to climb, slide, hop, and crawl his way back to camp over the next several days. I read the book, and I'm still not sure how he did it. It's sheer force of will that keeps him going.
What Simpson goes through is horrifying. He hallucinates and nearly succumbs to madness several times on his solitary journey. He suffers from dehydration, hunger, frostbite, exhaustion, and a broken leg, and somehow me manages to press onward continuously.
One of the things I found most interesting is that Simpson admits in the afterward that it took him years to figure out what he and Yates had done wrong. Meanwhile, reading the book, I spent the first 60 pages frustrated at their their lack of foresight, knowing exactly how it would cost them down the road.
Simpson and Yates assumed it would take them four days to conquer the mountain and brought exactly enough food for that trip. When the terrain became more difficult than they expected, and the weather more unpredictable, they ended up climbing far into the night, sacrificing sleep because they weren't covering ground as quickly as they hoped Despite this, they didn't make it to the summit and start back down until the fourth day. When they were sitting in a snowhole near the top of the mountain with frostbitten fingers using the last of their gas to melt snow and eating the last of their food, I knew they were doomed.
It's on the fifth day that Simpson falls and breaks not just his leg, but his ankle and heel as well.
After that, the book is hard to put down. Simpson is certain that he will die. The loneliness nearly drives him mad on his first night alone, and his dehydration and hunger that causes hallucinations. His survival instinct kicks in and forces him back to camp. Over the course of three days, he abseils to the bottom of the crevasse, climbs back up the other side, hops across a glacier, slides down the side of it, then hops the remaining six miles back to camp.
I don't think I will ever understand the desire to conquer mountains like this. They want to be the first to reach the peak of the Siula Grande. I take it for granted that there's a very good reason no one else has ever done it before. The risk is too high, too scary for me to ever attempt something like this.
Instead I lived vicariously through Joe and Simon. And I have to admit that the pictures were stunning. Even though I knew that both of them survived this ordeal, I had serious doubts that Joe would make it back to the base camp. He overcomes every single obstacle that gets thrown at him.
This man spent three days without food or water, with a painfully broken leg, alone on the side of a mountain hopping back to a camp that he could only hope was still there. I am simply in awe of him.
There's a documentary of this story available on youtube. I don't think I can embed the whole thing, but here's the first part:
I doubt I could ever do what Joe Simpson does over the pages of this book.
While climbing the 20,000+ foot tall Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes, Joe Simpson falls and breaks his leg. He and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, work out a system that gets them most of the way down the mountain in 300 foot intervals. But as they near the base of the mountain, Yates is forced to cut the rope in order to save is own life.
Simpson falls 100 feet and miraculously lands on a ledge about 50 feet down a crevasse. The crevasse looks bottomless, and Yates has no reason to believe that Joe survived the fall, so he returns to camp alone.
Somehow, Simpson finds the strength to climb, slide, hop, and crawl his way back to camp over the next several days. I read the book, and I'm still not sure how he did it. It's sheer force of will that keeps him going.
What Simpson goes through is horrifying. He hallucinates and nearly succumbs to madness several times on his solitary journey. He suffers from dehydration, hunger, frostbite, exhaustion, and a broken leg, and somehow me manages to press onward continuously.
One of the things I found most interesting is that Simpson admits in the afterward that it took him years to figure out what he and Yates had done wrong. Meanwhile, reading the book, I spent the first 60 pages frustrated at their their lack of foresight, knowing exactly how it would cost them down the road.
Simpson and Yates assumed it would take them four days to conquer the mountain and brought exactly enough food for that trip. When the terrain became more difficult than they expected, and the weather more unpredictable, they ended up climbing far into the night, sacrificing sleep because they weren't covering ground as quickly as they hoped Despite this, they didn't make it to the summit and start back down until the fourth day. When they were sitting in a snowhole near the top of the mountain with frostbitten fingers using the last of their gas to melt snow and eating the last of their food, I knew they were doomed.
It's on the fifth day that Simpson falls and breaks not just his leg, but his ankle and heel as well.
After that, the book is hard to put down. Simpson is certain that he will die. The loneliness nearly drives him mad on his first night alone, and his dehydration and hunger that causes hallucinations. His survival instinct kicks in and forces him back to camp. Over the course of three days, he abseils to the bottom of the crevasse, climbs back up the other side, hops across a glacier, slides down the side of it, then hops the remaining six miles back to camp.
I don't think I will ever understand the desire to conquer mountains like this. They want to be the first to reach the peak of the Siula Grande. I take it for granted that there's a very good reason no one else has ever done it before. The risk is too high, too scary for me to ever attempt something like this.
Instead I lived vicariously through Joe and Simon. And I have to admit that the pictures were stunning. Even though I knew that both of them survived this ordeal, I had serious doubts that Joe would make it back to the base camp. He overcomes every single obstacle that gets thrown at him.
This man spent three days without food or water, with a painfully broken leg, alone on the side of a mountain hopping back to a camp that he could only hope was still there. I am simply in awe of him.
There's a documentary of this story available on youtube. I don't think I can embed the whole thing, but here's the first part:
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