Touching the Void (book)

Touching the Void is a 1988 book by Joe Simpson, recounting his and Simon Yates's near fatal descent after climbing the 6,344-metre (20,814 ft) peak Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes.

[1] In 1985, Simpson and Yates reached the peak of Siula Grande, a major mountain in the Cordillera Huayhuash in the Peruvian Andes via the previously unclimbed West Face.

Because the difficult terrain and the poor weather conditions prevented rapid progress with the descent, the pair had to spend a night in a snow hole on the ridge.

Continuing the descent the following morning Simpson fell from an ice cliff and landed awkwardly, breaking his right leg and crushing his tibia into his knee joint.

The system worked; Yates lowered Simpson approximately 3,000 feet (910 m) by this method and the pair felt they were regaining control of the situation estimating that they had almost descended to the relative safety of the glacier.

With storm conditions worsening and darkness upon them, Yates continued lowering Simpson for what he estimated would be the last or penultimate time.

The slope that Simpson was being lowered down became gradually steeper and eventually he went over the edge of a cliff and was hanging free with his whole weight on the rope.

However, because his hands were badly frostbitten, he struggled to tie the knots properly and accidentally dropped one of the two loops required to ascend the rope.

From there, Simpson spent three days without food and with almost no water, crawling and hopping five miles (8 km) back to their base camp.

[8][9][10] The production toured for a year[11][12] before running at the Duke of York's Theatre in London's West End from November 2019 until February 2020.