Touching the Void

We watched Touching the Void last week. It's a docu-drama about Joe Simpson and Simon Yates' attempt to climb Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in 1985 and what happened after they succeeded. In essence Joe broke his leg, Simon tried to get him down the mountain and in the process they ended up with Joe hanging over a crevass on the end of a rope with Simon unable to move and stuck without any option other than cutting the rope. Simon thought Joe was dead and made his own way back to the base camp. However Joe got lucky and not only managed to find out of the crevass (by going further down into it!) but also crawling back to base with a broken leg.

It's a story you're probably familiar with as it got wide coverage when film first came out. I thought I was but there's several aspects of it which I wasn't aware of until I watched the film.

For a start they were both very young. Joe was 25, Simon only 21. Their "base camp" was a bloke they'd met who was bumming around in Peru who said he'd guard their tent while they did the climb. He had no climbing experience at all and, it turned out, didn't even know their surnames so if they hadn't returned he wouldn't have been able to help or even contact their loved ones to tell them they were dead.

There was no possibility of rescue if things went wrong, as they did.

You have to conclude they were pretty barking really.

What's also a little depressing is the "making of" documentary that goes with the film. Two things were clear: for Joe it brought back memories he'd supressed for a long time, which didn't do him any good, and for Simon it was worse if anything - he had clearly built up good mental walls over the whole episode but the crew kept trying to get him to break down and cry his eyes out. He wasn't playing. I can't say I'm surprised.

It was clear that the events of Touching the Void were a key point in both of their lives. if not the key point, and even twenty years later it still defined them in many ways.

Both of them went on to do a lot more climbing and both have written books. Joe in particular seems to know no fear. He has also survived many other major accidents, notably breaking his other leg in the Himalayas. I remarked to Beth that it wasn't that he was lucky, he was just the survivor - like any other high risk activity from climbing to playing the stock market we only remember the winners, not the losers. And Wikipedia reports that his feeling towards extreme mountaineering have now changed brought on by the many deaths that surround the pursuit. Can't say I'm surprised really.