Touching the Void
In 1985, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates set out to climb the unconquered west face of Siula Grande, a 21,000-foot peak in the Peruvian Andes. After reaching the summit, Simpson shattered his leg in a fall during the descent. What followed became one of the most extraordinary survival stories ever written. Lowered down the mountain on a rope by his partner, Simpson disappeared over an overhang into a crevasse. Believing him dead, Yates cut the rope and continued down alone. Simpson, however, was alive. With a broken leg, no food, and almost no water, he crawled and hopped for three days through ice, rock, and moraine to reach base camp just hours before his partner was set to leave. Simpson's account is unflinching, lucid, and stripped of self-pity, a study in the strange clarity that pain and isolation can bring.
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In May 1985, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates climb the unclimbed west face of 20,800-foot Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes alpine style. On the descent Joe shatters his right knee, Simon lowers him on a rope through a storm, and after a fall over a cornice, Simon makes the cut that drops his partner.
Yes. Touching the Void is Joe Simpson's 1988 memoir of his and Simon Yates's near-fatal climb of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in 1985. Simpson survived a brutal solo descent with a shattered leg.
Yes. Kevin Macdonald directed a 2003 docu-drama hybrid film with Joe Simpson and Simon Yates narrating their own ordeal alongside reenactments. The film is widely cited as one of the great mountaineering documentaries.
Touching the Void was written by Joe Simpson, published in 1988 by Pan.
Touching the Void is 187 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Touching the Void takes most readers 3 to 4 hours to finish.
Touching the Void is a standalone novel by Joe Simpson, not part of a series.
Touching the Void is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.