Touching The Void: The True Story Of One Man's Miraculous Survival (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
A million books were given away across the UK on World Book Night in April, and I got one of them at my local branch of Waterstones. I tend to think that the ideal book for World Book Night is something that you wouldn’t ordinarily think of reading, but that looks interesting once you start to consider it – a gentle nudge away from your comfort zone, in other words.That’s just the sort of book I received in Touching the Void, Joe Simpson’s account of his and Simon Yates’s 1985 expedition to climb Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. It’s what happened on the descent which makes the story so famous: Simpson broke his leg, and, whilst being lowered down the mountainside by Yates, got stuck in mid-air. With Simpson unable to move up or down, and Yates losing his grip, Yates decided he had to cut the rope joining the two of them. Simpson fell into a crevasse, but nevertheless beat the odds and made it back to camp, alive.Touching the Void begins prosaically enough:I was lying in my sleeping bag, staring at the light filtering through the red and green fabric of the dome tent. Simon was snoring loudly, occasionally twitching in his dream world. We could have been anywhere. There is a peculiar anonymity about being in tents. (p. 15)That tent will, naturally, assume vital importance later on; in a neat mirroring, the familiar light inside the tent at the beginning becomes an alien sight when Simpson is approaching it from the outside, in desperation, towards the end. This is one of several examples in the book of the same thing taking on different qualities at different times – the mountain scenery is by turns hostile and welcoming, for instance.The passage I’ve quoted there also contains the first of Simpson’s observations about the peculiarities of climbing. I’ve never been up a mountain myself (though I have done my Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and so have some experience of outdoor activity), so perhaps I didn’t connect personally with the descriptions of climbing as I might otherwise have; but this exchange did strike a chord:‘What shall it be then?’ Simon held up two foil bags. ‘Moussaka or Turkey Supreme?’‘Who gives a toss! They’re both disgusting!’‘Good choice. We’ll have the Turkey.’Two brews of passion fruit and a few prunes later we settled back for sleep. (p. 39)It’s the odd combination of foods and flavours which brings home the reality of having to eat what you’ve got, and of eating for energy rather than taste – a sense of how one’s priorities change on a mountain. We also see the kind of mentality that may be needed: Simpson tells the story at one point of how, on a previous expedition, Yates saw two unfamiliar climbers fall to their deaths from the same mountain he was climbing; when he returned to camp, says Simpson, Yates ‘had sat numb’, turning the incident over and over in his mind; but, the next day, ‘he was his normal self again: an experience absorbed, shelved in his memory, understood and accepted, and left at that’ (p. 64). The capacity to put even the worst experiences behind you can, this suggests, be useful – even vital – to mountaineers.Yates’s capacity to do just this is tested to its limit when he’s faced with cutting the rope; as Simpson shows (in passages written from Yates’s viewpoint), this was both an impossible choice and, really, no choice at all. As he’s making his own way down the mountain, assuming (quite reasonably) that Simpson is dead, Yates veers back and forth over the question of how to describe what happened, whether to feel guilt or resignation. Simpson creates a fine portrait of an extreme moral dilemma.But it’s Simpson’s account of his time alone and injured on the mountain which live most vividly in my memory. The description of his plummeting into the crevasse, then lying there in the dark, is horrifying; and we feel Simpson’s pain and frustration (as far as that’s possible, of course) at every slow step of his journey down. It makes his survival seem all the more remarkable.This edition of Touching the Void includes a section written in 2003, after the making of the film version. As part of this, Simpson describes how he returned to Siula Grande and played himself in reconstructions of the incident. This seems so strange, I can’t begin to imagine what it might have been like, nor find the words to describe how I responded to reading about it. Simpson himself closes the book reflecting on how his life has changed in such unexpected ways:Life can deal you an amazing hand. Do you play it steady, bluff like crazy or go all in? I’ll never know (p. 215).So, Touching the Void ends with a question we might all have cause to consider at some point – and it has opened a window on an extraordinary human experience. A fine book for World Book Night.
Not since Moses clambered up Sinai to meet his maker has the story of a man, a mountain, and a brush with infinity attracted so much attention as Joe Simpson's Touching the Void (1988). The book has become a perennial favorite with adrenaline addicts and is found near the top of most mountain literature must-read lists. Though the first chapters are laced with technical climbing jargon, the great chunk of the story is related in the short cries, grunts, and obscenities you would expect to find popping from the mouths of two young men facing a nightmarish trial on a 21,000 ft peak. The adventure begins in the Peruvian Andes, where Simpson and his climbing partner Simon Yates attempt to scale the ice shrouded slopes of Siula Grande in a bid to be the first to reach the summit in decades. The climbing, though more difficult than anticipated, proves manageable for the skilled alpinists. But upon reaching the summit, Simpson suffers the "usual anticlimax" of his sport, the bittersweet reckoning of just what he had really accomplished, coupled with the empty feeling of "What now?" He was about to find out.Steep slopes, unstable snow, and the onset of a blizzard make every step of the descent a life-and-death ordeal. When Simpson falls and breaks his right leg, Yates, in a truly heroic style, attempts to lower his injured partner down the near vertical face of the mountain in a blizzard ... at night ... with a broken headlamp ... his hands horribly frostbitten. And he nearly succeeds. But when Simpson inadvertently slips over a steep cliff and is left dangling in mid air, too weak to climb up the rope and too far from the mountain to secure himself, Yates has no option but to cut the rope that links them together lest he himself be pulled into the void.How Simpson survived his fall into the abyss, freed himself from a deep crevasse, and dragged himself over miles of glacier and moraine back to camp – just as Yates was preparing to leave – has become a story of almost mythic proportions. Simpson has certainly made the most of his ordeal, publishing a bestselling book, speaking on several lecture tours, and even appearing in the film version (Charlton Heston's got nothing to worry about). But the reason he wrote this book, he insists, was to deflect the sharp blame and censure that was hurled at Yates for having taken a knife to the otherwise sacrosanct rope. I must give Simpson credit for never downplaying the difficulties Yates faced, and for confessing, that having found himself in Yate's position, he too would have cut the rope. I suspect you'll appreciate Simpson's honesty and the direct, artless style of his book as much as you'll enjoy its precipitous pace.
What do You think about Touching The Void: The True Story Of One Man's Miraculous Survival (2004)?
This is a classic survival book and it includes examples of all the things I look for in a good classic read. Two young mountain climbers attempt a new ascent of a remote mountain in Peru. To save weight and space they do not take enough tools and food with them, then weather and other unexpected difficulties lead to the ascent taking longer than expected. The two climbers push themselves when they should have rested and take some other unnecessary risks so when the author Joe Simpson falls and breaks his leg, they are fatigued and their supplies are limited. His friend Simon Yates does everything possible to help Joe down the mountain, but Joe falls into a crevasse and after hours holding onto the mountaineering rope, and in danger of falling himself, Simon cuts the rope and leaves Joe, believing him to be dead. About half the 200 page book is the story of Joe’s amazing crawl out of the crevasse, across a glacier and through impossibly difficult terrain, all with a severely broken leg, frost bite, and no water or food. The book openly discusses the risks and the mistakes that led to the crises (plural intentional) and the ethical questions of cutting the rope and leaving one’s partner on the mountain. It also provides great insight into how a person survives under the worst possible circumstances. Joe talks of the importance of establishing patterns that keep you moving toward success without having to think about time or place and about the need to focus on short term goals. He also talks about the “voice,” an inner voice that instructs him what to do and how to do it – this rational, instructional “voice” is noted by other disaster survivors and credited with providing the means for survival. This incident is also a motion picture which I have seen. It is hard for me to admit, but I think the movie is better. It also follows up better on the way this event affected both Joe’s and Simon’s lives. I think the movie would be an excellent jumping off point for a discussion with mid to older teenagers of taking risk, assessing danger, achieving goals and the ethics of ones actions.
—Diane
Ok, even though the reader knows how it ends: as one of the mountaineers wrote this book, it’s incredibly suspenseful. I do seem to adore mountain climbing books, although it’s a totally vicarious experience as you could never get me on one of these expeditions. Especially this one as their method was different than all the other accounts I’ve read of mountain climbers. On the one hand I felt infuriated with these 2 men for taking such huge risks, but their story is unbelievably riveting and well told and I appreciated the honesty with which it was told as well. The thing is, it seems impossible that either one, especially the author, could survive what happened to them. Everything that could go wrong did, but so did everything that could go right.
—Lisa Vegan
We climbed 'cause it's fun. And mainly it was fun. That's all we ever did. And we were fairly anarchic and fairly irresponsible, and we didn't give a damn about anyone else or anything else, and we just wanted to climb the world. And it was fun. It was just brilliant fun. And every now and then it went wildly wrong. And then it wasn't. ~ Joe SimpsonI must confess: I’m a couch potato. I’m not proud but I’m honest. Regardless, this doesn’t keep me from enjoying watching others push their bodies to the limit. Climbing Mt. Everest? I’m there. Football game in the 100-degree heat? I’m there. Clog dancing? I’m there…right there in front of the TV.For some reason this woman who can’t complete one chin up has always been fascinated with mountaineers and their hubristic attempts to scale impossible heights. My favorite story by far is Simon Yates' and Joe Simpson’s 1985 ascension to the 20,814 foot summit of Siula Grande in Peru. Their story became part of mountaineering legend, and was turned into the documentary Touching the Void in 2003. Yes, they climbed ‘cause it was fun. They also climbed because they were young and cocky and knew they could succeed where others had failed.Yates and Simpson did succeed and were the first to reach the summit by scaling the West face, but they made the mistake of descending on the North ridge. The weather slowed their progress and they ran out of food and gas; without gas they weren’t able to melt snow to drink and soon became weak with hunger, thirst, and exhaustion. Then things went wildly wrong when Simpson fell and shattered his leg, forcing the lower bone through his knee joint. He expected Yates to leave him, but Yates stayed and lowered his mate down the mountain, 300 painstaking feet at a time.Yates would anchor himself in a snow seat, lower Simpson down, and when Simpson tugged on the rope, he would climb down and start the procedure over again. But there came a point in their descent when Yates waited for a tug that never came; he had unknowingly lowered Simpson over an overhanging cliff. For an hour and a half Simpson hung in mid-air, and Yates held his place on the sugary slope for as long as he could before he started to slide down the mountain. Then he remembered that he had a pen knife in his rucksack and quickly made the decision to cut the rope and save himself. With this action he dropped Simpson 100 feet into a crevasse. What happened after this is a testament to how nearly indestructible the human body is and just how stubborn two athletes at the top of their games can be.At one time Tom Cruise was in line to play Joe Simpson in a movie version of Touching the Void. Thank goodness that plan was never put into action. The decision to intersperse Yates' and Simpson’s first-hand accounts with two actors re-enacting the scenes was the right one. I've watched Touching the Void many times since it arrived on DVD. Watch it and judge for yourself if it’s more enjoyable and suspenseful than the movies they're passing off as entertainment in Hollywood these days.
—Tressa
