Touching The Void

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In 1985, 25-year-old Joe Simpson and another British climber, Simon Yates, 21, were climbing the west face of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes when Simpson fell and badly broke his leg. If they are successful, their feat would be considered a major achievement in the mountaineering community. During the night they had eaten the last of their food and used the last of fuel for their stove to melt ice and snow for drinking water.

This involved navigating the glacier (which was scattered with more crevasses) and the moraines below. The system worked; Yates lowered Simpson approximately 3000 feet by this method and the pair felt they were regaining control of the situation estimating that they had almost descended to the relative safety of the glacier. Simpson’s book about his improbable survival, Touching the Void, has sold more than 1m copies and in 2003 became a Bafta-winning film. It’s in the sagas of Beowulf, everything from Robert the Bruce, even Jesus Christ: of somebody going away to a very dark, scary place, often death or into Hades, and coming back. Simpson's survival is regarded by mountaineers as amongst the most remarkable instances of survival against the odds.

I’ve done various things like paragliding and they’re fun, but they haven’t come near replacing climbing. On Desert Island Discs in 2004, you said you never expected to find a life partner, but you’ve since got married to Corrinne . From 2000 to 2003, he attempted to climb the North Face of Eiger in Switzerland six times but had to abort due to bad weather conditions. On the ascent, the two climbers take turns serving as the lead and the belay point while roped together on a 150-foot rope. Yates proceeded to lower Simpson off the North Ridge using their two 150-foot (46m) ropes tied together to make one 300-foot (91m) rope, controlling the speed at which he lowered Simpson using a belay plate.

He tries to create a Prusik knot, which is a friction hitch that attaches two ropes together so they can be adjusted easily.With storm conditions worsening and darkness upon them, Yates continued lowering Simpson for what he estimated would be the last or penultimate time.

They remained in this position for some time (Yates estimates in excess of one and a half hours [2]), until it was obvious to Yates that his unbelayed stance, merely a seat dug into the near vertical snow slope without any fixed anchors, was gradually collapsing as he began to be pulled downwards in 'small jerky steps'. He therefore had to save himself but he found it impossible to climb up to the entrance of the crevasse, because of the overhanging ice and his broken leg. Yates realized the situation that Simpson had been in and that he must have fallen into the crevasse when the rope was cut. Of course, I might just be talking out my arse, because I’ve been asked this question so many times, but I’ve always thought it’s more than just an adventure story. The knot in the ropes does not fit through the belay plate, a piece of climbing safety equipment used to control the rope and act as a friction brake.

But on another level, there is a regret that I never really did find out what I could do from a mountaineering point of view. It then had an extended run on the West End and will be performed live and to a streamed audience from 26 to 29 May 2021 at Bristol Old Vic. This methodology meant that each lower had to proceed in three stages: two to descend each rope length, and one to negotiate the join between them.

Continuing the descent the following morning Simpson fell from an ice cliff and landed awkwardly, breaking his right leg and crushing his tibia into his knee joint. The slope that Simpson was being lowered down became gradually steeper and eventually he went over the edge of a cliff and was hanging free with his whole weight on the rope. Exhausted and suffering from hypothermia and frostbite, Yates dug himself a snow cave to wait out the storm. Because Yates was sitting higher up the mountain, he could not see nor hear Simpson to fully assess the situation; he could only feel that Simpson had all his weight on the rope.In a fortunate coincidence, although Yates had no choice as to where in the rope's 300-foot (91m) length he made the cut (it happened to be in the middle) it left each climber a sufficient length of rope to extricate themselves from their overnight positions. When he reached the glacier he could see from below the position in which Simpson had been hanging and observed the large crevasse immediately underneath.