The 25th Anniversary ebook, now with more than 50 images. 'Touching the Void' is the tale of two mountaineer’s harrowing ordeal in the Peruvian Andes. In the summer of 1985, two young, headstrong mountaineers set off to conquer an unclimbed route. They had triumphantly reached the summit, when a horrific accident mid-descent forced one friend to leave another for dead. Ambition, morality, fear and camaraderie are explored in this electronic edition of the mountaineering classic, with never before seen colour photographs taken during the trip itself.
In 1928 a journalist asked George Mallory why he wanted to climb Everest. Mallory said, 'Because it's there.' Joe Simpson's memoir Touching the Void, international bestseller and BAFTA-winning film, charts his struggle for survival on the perilous Siula Grande mountain in the Peruvian Andes aged twenty-five. Adapted for the stage by David Greig, Joe's story explodes into a bold theatrical fantasia. We discover the counter-cultural world of Alpine climbing and the sensual joy of the mountains; we bear witness to the appalling moment when Joe's climbing partner Simon Yates, battered by freezing winds and tethered to the injured Simpson, makes the critical decision to cut the rope. Tense, funny and inquisitive, Touching the Void explores the mind's extraordinarily rich reservoirs of strength and imagination when teetering on the edge of death. David Greig's Touching the Void premiered at Bristol Old Vic, Bristol in September 2018.
* Concise, objective account of the 1996 Everest debacle * One of Simpson's most controversial and challenging books * Short listed for the 1997 Boardman Tasker Award In 1992, an Indian climber was left to die alone high on the South Col of Mount Everest by other climbers who watched his feebly waving hand from the security of their tent thirty yards away. Some film footage of his corpse was later shown on television. Why did these onlookers not hold the dying man's hand and comfort him? The answer appalls Joe Simpson, who was himself left for dead in a crevasse at the foot of Siula Grande in Peru in 1985. It is an uncomfortable ethical question that he is forced to confront as he attempts a difficult new route on Pumori, with a clear view of the whole South Col from close to the vantage point where Eric Shipton first spotted the way up the south side of Everest taken by Hillary and Tenzing in 1953. Now that Everest has become the playground of the rich, where commercial operators offer guided tours to the top up fixed ropes, camping amidst the detritus and unburied corpses of previous less fortunate climbers, Simpson wonders if the noble, caring instincts that once characterized mountaineering have been irrevocably displaced as in other facets of today's society. On investigation, he finds it a less black and white issue that at first it seemed. "I shall never forget the horror of dying alone, the awful empty loneliness of it," he says. Yet his empathy for the victims of storms, altitude sickness, or misjudgments, is tested time and again as he explores anecdotally and in conversations with his companions on Pumori, the moral climate of mountaineering in the 1990s.
Simon Yates, author of Against the Wall, takes us back to his early years as a climber - the escapades and excitement of a young life lived on the edge and for the moment, when experience was all-important and dramatic achievements and failures came as naturally as the hair-raising risks themselves. A mountaineering travelogue of dazzling variety, The Flame of Adventure moves from the camaraderie of deprived Russian climbers in the little-known peaks in the Tien Shan to the awesome experience of the North Face of the Eiger, from a rumbustious motorbike ride across Australia with a psychotic lorry driver. We meet a remarkable gallery of climbers, from Doug Scott to Joe Simpson, and, when not exploring high mountains, we enter the bizarre world of rope access workers: mavericks balancing high above building sites on the London skyline.
Joe Simpson recounts his experiences as a mountain climber in the Himalayas, offering his insights into the perplexing nature of aggression and violence -- in himself, others, and society.
It seemed like any other season on Mount Everest. Ten expeditions from around the world were preparing for their summit push, gathered together to try for mountaineering's ultimate prize. Twenty-four hours later, eight of those climbers were dead, victims of the most devastating storm ever to hit Everest. On the North face of the mountain, a British expedition found itself in the thick of the drama. Against all odds, film-maker Matt Dickinson and professional climber Alan Hinkes managed to battle through hurricane-force winds to reach the summit. In Death Zone, Matt Dickinson describes the extraordinary event that put the disaster on the front cover of Time and Newsweek. The desperate attempts of teams on the southern side of the mountain, fatal errors that led to the deaths of three Indian climbers on the North Ridge and the moving story of Rob Hall, the New Zealand guide who stayed with his stricken client, and paid with his life. Based on interviews with the surviving climbers and the first-hand experience of having lived through the killer storm, this gripping non-fiction book tackles issues at the very heart of mountaineering. Death Zone is an extraordinary story of human triumph, folly and disaster.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The authors bring extreme climbing to life. . . . Perhaps no author can rationalize why some choose to risk their lives . . . for the thrill of conquering a mountain. The Ledge comes perilously close and tells a ripping true story at the same time.”—The Denver Post In June 1992, best friends Jim Davidson and Mike Price stood atop Washington’s Mount Rainier, celebrating what they hoped would be the first of many milestones in their lives as passionate mountaineers. Then their triumph turned tragic when a cave-in plunged them deep inside a glacial crevasse—the pitch-black, ice-walled hell of every climber’s nightmares. An avid adventurer since youth, Davidson was a seasoned climber at the time of the Rainier ascent. But the harrowing free fall left him challenged by nature’s grandeur at its most unforgiving. Trapped on a narrow frozen shelf, deep below daylight, he desperately battled crumbling ice, snow that threatened to bury him alive, and crippling fear of the inescapable chasm below—all the while struggling to save his fatally injured friend. Finally, alone, with little equipment and rapidly dwindling hope, he confronted a fateful choice: the certainty of a slow, lonely death or the near impossibility of an agonizing climb for life. A story of heart-stopping adventure, heartfelt friendship, fleeting mortality, and implacable nature, The Ledge chronicles the elation and grief, dizzying heights and punishing depths, of a journey to hard-won wisdom. “Plunges readers into a dark, icy chasm from which escape seems impossible. Then it reveals the strength it takes to look up, and to start climbing.”—Jim Sheeler, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of the National Book Award finalist Final Salute “How [Davidson] rescued himself is the core of The Ledge, and its most gripping part. The physical effort and will involved are astonishing.”—The Plain Dealer “A moving portrait of friendship and loss.”—The Wall Street Journal
