Touching The Void: The Harrowing First Person Account Of One Man's

joe simpson stuart langton

Joe Simpson and Simon Yates were descending a 21,000-foot peak in the Andes when Simpson fell off an ice ledge, breaking his leg. In a desperate struggle to get his friend off the mountain, Yates lowered Simpson over a 3,000-foot cliff. When his belay collapsed, Yates was forced to cut the ropes just seconds before he would have been pulled to his own death. Simpson fell away into the dark, leaving Yates to assume his partner was dead. After a search, Yates returned to base. Four days later, and in a tremendous feat of endurance, Simpson crawled into camp, half dead. An epic chronicle of suffering and survival, and of the triumph of the human spirit. "Simpson touches a nerve of the mountaineering community and the hearts of others." (Los Angeles Times)