The Red Bulletin February/March 2020 (UK)

Joe Simpson
Staying
alive
What drives a person to survive when all hope is
gone? This climber lived to tell, and his story has
become one of mountaineering’s greatest legends
Words TOM GUISE Photography SAM RILEY
First, it was the stuff of folklore:
a whispered tale about two young
British climbers – 25-year-old Joe
Simpson and 21-year-old Simon
Yates – who, in 1985, became the
first to scale the West Face of the
6,344m Siula Grande in the Peruvian
Andes. 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.
But Simpson survived, and four
days later he crawled into base camp.
Three years later, he gave his account
in a best-selling book, Touching the
Void, which was adapted into a
documentary in 2003 and now into
a West End play. 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.”
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 Derbyshire
home. 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…
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.
“People have
this idea of
what survival
is about. But
it’s brutal”
We had a 3,000ft 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, 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.
After an hour, we were 300ft
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 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 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.
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.
26 THE RED BULLETIN