Mountaineering
Joe Simpson recounts one of mountaineering's greatest survival stories
What drives a person to survive when all hope is gone? This climber lived to tell and his harrowing story is still just as powerful 35 years on.
First it was the stuff of folklore: a tale about two British climbers – 25-year-old Joe Simpson and 21-year-old Simon Yates – who, in 1985, became the first people to scale the West Face of the 6,344m Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. It was a moment of triumph that quickly became a living nightmare.
On the descent, Simpson plunged down an ice cliff, shattering his leg. As night fell, and with a storm rapidly closing in, they were forced to continue in the dark, separated by just 45m of rope and with no way of communicating. When the injured Simpson was inadvertently lowered over a cliff, Yates hung on for more than an hour before making a devastating decision: he cut the rope, sending his companion plunging to certain death.
Staying alive
© Sam Riley
But Simpson survived, and four days later he crawled into base camp. Three years after that, he gave his account in a best-selling book, Touching the Void, which was adapted into a documentary in 2003 and a play in 2018. It’s a startling case study of a man facing death, but one that’s absolutely about living.
“Would I have cut the rope? In Simon’s situation, without a doubt,” Simpson tells The Red Bulletin. “My only criticism is that it took him more than an hour to remember the only knife we had was in the top pocket of his rucksack. The real question is: if it had been in my rucksack and I could feel Simon being pulled down, would I have cut the rope to save him? I don’t think I would.”
Would I have cut the rope? In Simon’s situation, without a doubt
Today, at 59 years old, Simpson is a successful author and motivational speaker. “I hate the expression ‘motivation’ – it's bollocks,” he says, sipping a cup of tea in his home in the British county of Derbyshire.
Simpson is a man of contradictions. It’s to be expected from someone who, by all accounts, should have died, but instead makes a living from the story of his survival. More than 30 years later, Simpson re-examines what it was like to touch – and very nearly cross – the void, so continue reading to hear him describe the ordeal in his own words.
The moment that changed everything
About a third of the way down the ice cliff, I was thinking, “Don’t fall here,” because Simon was coming down and there was slack rope between us. I put my right axe in and the ice disintegrated. I landed at the base of the cliff.
My right leg locked backwards, my crampons maximising the force. It punched my tibia up into my femur and it carried on through my knee joint. I tore my anterior cruciate ligament, damaged my peroneal nerve, destroyed two menisci [cartilages] in my knee and fractured my heel and ankle. The pain was excruciating.
I was in denial at first, so I tried to stand and felt all these bones going. When Simon appeared, he asked if I was alright. When I told him I’d broken my leg, his whole expression changed. Before, we were equal partners working together; now, suddenly, one of us was an invalid. We had a 3,000ft [914m] face to get down. He was thinking I was dead.
Rapid descent
I’d probably lost a quart of blood [almost a litre] internally. I was going down as fast as Simon could lower me. Every 150ft [45m], the knot joining our two ropes would come up and hit Simon’s friction device. That was my signal to get my weight off the rope. Simon would unclip, put the knot on the other side of the device, give three tugs and start lowering me again.
Simon hung on for what seemed like a lifetime, then I found myself freefalling
After an hour, we were 300ft [91m] down. We only had to do it 10 more times to get to the bottom of the mountain, but we didn’t realise we were in line with this ice cliff sticking out from the slope. At 9.30pm, Simon lowered me off the edge and I came to a stop with about 100ft [30m] of air and the shadow of a covered crevasse beneath me. The knot had reached his friction device. My weight was on the rope and he couldn’t get the knot over; we were locked into the system and going to die. Simon hung on for what seemed like a lifetime, then I found myself freefalling.
The ice tomb
I hit the ridge of the crevasse and went through. I smashed into an old collapsed part of the roof and stopped. I saw the hole in the roof 70-plus feet [20m+] above me and thought, “Simon has gone flying. He’s gone.” I pulled on the rope, thinking it would come tied to his body – I could use it as a counterweight and climb up the rope. The end of the rope lashed down around me. Simon had cut it.
Touching the Void
© Sam Riley
People ask, “Were you angry with Simon?” I wasn’t. I thought, “Thank Christ, Simon’s alive.” Apart from being my friend, he was useful to me alive. He might be coming down to look for me. Then I thought to myself, “Shit, he won’t find you in the dark, so you have to scream his name as loudly as you can every five minutes.”
Crevasses are scary places to be in, especially if the thought creeps in that you’re not getting out. I had this image of a long death and it burnt me to pieces. I’m really quite ashamed, because I broke down. By about 9.30 in the morning, I realised Simon should have found me.
The escape
I tried to climb up, but I couldn’t. When I looked down, I could see only darkness. This crevasse was a bergschrund – the separation between the glacier and the mountain base. They can be 50ft or 500ft [15-150m] deep. I didn’t have the courage to just jump off. I clipped my abseil device, but I deliberately chose not to tie a knot in the end of the rope; I thought, “Look, if I get down there and I’m hanging in space, why would I want to climb back up and spend six days dying?”
If I was going to die, I wanted to do it in sunlight
About 70ft below, avalanches had created a choke point and a slope that was probably 65°. On this unconsolidated snow, I could manage that with hopping jumps. I wasn’t considering how to survive, just how to get out. If I was going to die, I wanted to do it in sunlight.
Slow crawl
I stuck my head out of the crevasse at about one o’clock in the afternoon and sat there giggling manically. I saw Simon’s rope off to the left; he’d abseiled down the glacier. I now knew I was on my own – you don’t come back for a corpse. That was a sobering moment. I was a long way from base camp: a mile and a half [2.5km] of crevasse glacier, then six-and-a-half miles [10.5km] of moraines [mounds of debris left by glaciers] and rocks.
When you’re trying to survive, the last thing you need is emotion: it’s a waste of energy. Part of me was pragmatic, thinking how far I could go, what state my body was in, and how little food I had. My conclusion was, “You won’t make it.” But I thought, “If you die here, you’ll be buried in snow and disappear for ever. Nobody will ever know what’s happened to you.” I crawled for the next three-and-a-half days.
Survival mode
When you’re alone for a long time – no data coming in, no conversations, nothing to read or see – your mind drifts. I would think I’d rested for five minutes, but then I’d look at my cheap, crappy watch and 45 minutes had gone by.
I’d been dead for four days now. That was the point where it was completely crushing
I went, “Right, I’m going to get to that crevasse in 20 minutes. Then I’m going to get to that red rock in 20 minutes.” It created structure and discipline. Sometimes I’d beat the target and I was made up; other times I’d lose and I was pissed off. But it kept me from the big picture of “you’re completely fucked”.
On the last night, I started to fail. I was probably 10 minutes’ walk from base, but it took me nine hours. I was in and out of consciousness and experiencing hallucinations, some enjoyable, others weird. I stopped looking at my watch, so I lost all sense of purpose. I was probably dying. I shouted, hoping that Simon and Richard [Hawking, their camp assistant] would hear me. They did, but they thought I was a dog. Why would it occur to them that it was me? I’d been dead for four days now. That was the point where it was completely crushing.
People ask, ‘Were you angry with Simon?’ I wasn’t
© Sam Riley
End game
In a funny way, it was a confirmation of what I’d thought when I’d started crawling: “You are not getting out of this.” It was a lonely place to be. I remember debating whether to get into my sleeping bag, but I thought that if I did I wouldn’t get out of it again.
I thought that if I crawled down to the riverbed, someone would definitely find my body. I wasn’t expecting to meet anybody but just crawl to the end of the end game, to die there. It was quite horrible. I inadvertently crawled through our campsite latrine area and got covered in human faeces. Human shit really does stink. But it acted like smelling salts and suddenly I knew where I was: within 100 yards [91m] of where the tents had been.
People have this idea of what survival is about, but the reality is that it’s brutal
I assumed [Simon and Richard] had left, so I sat there feeling sorry for myself. I knew this was where it would end. But I hadn’t considered that Simon also needed to recover and was in no rush to get home to tell all our friends he’d just killed me. I saw a red-and-yellow dome-like thing that I thought was a spaceship. Then these white beams came out and I heard Simon’s voice.
People have this idea of what survival is about, but the reality is that it’s brutal. You get destroyed on several levels: physically you’re not putting any fuel in and eventually you just stop working. On a psychological level, you go through stuff that really f*cks with your head. You don’t only learn that you’re strong, but that you’re incredibly weak, too. You’re breaking down all the time. I had accepted the situation, so it was a shock when Simon and Richard suddenly appeared. I just collapsed.
Being found
I’d lost about 35 percent of my body weight. When you’re in a state of starvation, your body uses ketones [chemicals created by the liver] to break down the protein in your muscles and organs and your breath has a sweet smell like nail varnish remover.
Eleven days after I’d broken my leg, I got to hospital
Simon smelt my breath and knew I was going into ketoacidosis; I was dying. I needed a salt and sugar drip, but we didn’t have any tubes or needles. We didn’t know at the time, but there is a simple way of doing it: fill a bottle with sugar and saltwater and stick it up your arse. With people to look after me, I suddenly stopped having to survive. I got quite scared, probably because I’d been running on endomorphins and adrenaline for four days.
Barely conscious, we rode a mule for two days, then spent 23 hours in a pick-up truck. I was quite pissed off: I wanted to sleep, but Simon was so worried about the state I was in, he wanted me to get to medical help. The bloody mule walked into everything. I just thought, “When the fuck is this going to end?” Eleven days after I’d broken my leg, I got to hospital.
Resurrection
A lot of people say, “An experience like that must have changed your life, your attitude to death; you must feel stronger.” All it taught me is that I don’t want to know my own death. I also learnt that Simon and I were bloody good mountaineers, because if we’d been bumbling amateurs we would not have got out of that shit. Afterwards, people decided Simon was in the wrong, but they had no understanding of what actually happened.
I thought people were going to get pissed off with me for being a wuss
So I wrote [the first draft of] Touching the Void in about seven weeks. I thought people were going to get pissed off with me for being a wuss. But then it became this huge success. It taught me I could write. I gave slideshows to the climbing community, got into corporate speaking, and that’s where I now make a comfortable living. Standing and talking in front of people is not an easy thing, and that’s why I like it.
The reason I like mountaineering is not because it’s dangerous or scary, but because there is a price to pay if you screw up. It’s about mastering a skill, and now I’m a skilled speaker. What really changed my life was not the shit time I had in Peru, but that if it hadn’t happened I probably wouldn’t be financially secure. I know I should have a greater philosophical insight, but that’s the truth.
Joe Simpson’s latest ebook, Walking the Wrong Side of the Grass, is available on Kindle. Touching the Void is at the Duke of York’s Theatre, London, until February 29; thedukeofyorks.com