Joe Simpson Touching The Void Essay

What would you do if you fell off the side of a mountain, into a crevice, and was left to die? Most people would have accepted their fates and prepared for death. But Joe Simpson when faced with certain death, refused to accept his fate and put himself through hell to complete the impossible task of making it of the mountain. The book Touching the Void by Joe Simpson is a biography thriller, about climbers Joe Simpson and Simon Yates climbing experience in the Andes mountains. This book was published in 1988 and was Simpson’s first attempt at writing. After the success of his first book he went onto write multiple other books such as: This Game of Ghosts, Storms of Silence, and Dark Shadows of Falling. Despite the tragic events explained in Touching the Void, Simpson …show more content…
This face of the mountain had never been conquered by any climber. After a few days of intense climbing they reach the 21,000 foot summit. Their success soon turned to tragedy as Simpson breaks his leg in a fall during the descent. This is any climbers worst nightmare, but for the climbing amateurs out there a broken leg at 20,000 feet means certain death. Yates who refused to abandon his friend attempted to lower Simpson down the mountain after the incident. Due to a blizzard that was hitting the mountain hard at the time, Yates accidentally lowered Simpson off the edge of a huge cliff. After hours of trying to save Simpson, Yates had to cut the rope which kept Simpson from falling, in order to save his own life. Yates consumed by guilt makes the journey back to camp, but unknown to him Joe managed to survive during the fall. Over the course of the next three days Simpson had to summon every last bit of energy he had to overcome his broken leg, dehydration, starvation, and the horrid weather, to make it off of the mountain and back to the base