Touching The Void

One of the best adventure documentary I have ever seen and before seeing this I don’t have idea about mountains in Peru(I always thought that it must be as hot as Brazil is )

It is directed by Kevin MacDonald recounting the true story of Simpson’s and Simon Yates’ disastrous and near-fatal climb of the 6,344-metre (20,813 foot) Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in 1985.

Both the friends climbed the Siula Grande from the west side which is the most toughest side to climb and become the first ever mountaineers to achieve this.Disaster struck, however, on the descent.

Simpson slipped down an ice cliff and landed awkwardlys and breaking his knee joint. The pair,had run out of fuel for their stove, which they needed to melt ice and snow for drinking water, and needed to descend quickly to their base camp, about 3,000 feet below.

A second disaster struck when Yates was lowering Simpson down the mountain, and lowered him off a cliff. He (Yates) was in a belay seat, much higher up the mountain, and Yates could not see or hear Simpson, but felt all his weight on the rope. Simpson could not climb up because of his broken leg, and Yates could not pull him back up as his belay seat was slowly crumbling up. Neither of them could do anything to save both of them.

Yates had two choices: stay in that same position and wait for the belay seat to break, which would probably have resulted in both their deaths, or he could cut the rope and then climb down to see where Simpson was.

Yates decided that the only logical step was to cut the rope. Unfortunately, below Simpson at the bottom of the cliff was a deep crevasse, and he knew he would fall into it. When Yates cut the rope, Simpson plummeted down the cliff and into the crevasse.

The next day, Yates carried on descending the mountain by himself. When he reached the crevasse he realised the situation that Simpson had been in, and what had happened when he cut the rope. After calling for Simpson, he was forced to assume that he had died either from the fall or during the night and so continued down the mountain alone.

Now here start the best part of the movie,

Simpson was, however, still alive and on a ledge inside the crevasse. He had survived a 100 ft fall, with a broken leg.He spent three days without food and only splashes of water from melting ice, crawling and hopping five miles back to the base camp. Almost completely delusional, he reached the base camp a few hours before Yates intended to leave the camp to return to civilization.

He almost lost 1/3 of his weight during this process.Simpson’s survival is widely regarded by mountaineers as amongst the most amazing pieces of mountaineering lore.

This movie take you with Simpson and his journey of survival.Don’t miss this thriller.