Touching The Void

Touching The Void

'Snowflakes feathered against my face; the wind tugged at my clothing. The night remained black.Warm tears mingled with the cold melted snow on my face. I wanted it to end. I felt destroyed. For the first time in many days I accepted that I had finally come to the end of my strength.'

In may 1985, mountaineers Joe Simpson and Simon Yates set out to scale the West Face of the 21,000-foot Siula Grande, which stands majestically in the heart of the Peruvian Andes. It had never been climbed and their pioneering expedition was to be marked by terrible disaster and remarkable courage, as revealed in this astonishing narrative.

Simpson and Yates reached Siula Grande’s summit, but during their descent Simpson broke his leg in a fall. Despite heroic efforts, Yates was left with no alternative than to cut the rope joining them. Effectively left for dead, Simpson embarked on a harrowing solo journey across the glaciers.

His gripping personal account graphically portrays his desperate daily search for water and nightly quest for shelter; his struggle against agonising pain, hunger, frostbite and increasing delirium.

Specially commissioned illustrations by Geoff Grandfield, conveying the scale of the dramatic landscape and the protagonists’ deadly predicament, complement the awardwinning narrative. An epilogue describes the author’s return to Siula Grande in 2003 for the making of the film version of Touching the Void. Simpson’s modern classic – described by Chris Bonington as ‘one of the most incredible stories of survival that I have ever read’ – is testament to the camaraderie forged between the two intrepid climbers in the Andean heights, and a consummate evocation of how the human spirit can overcome the most extreme adversity.