Touching the Void In Review

	photo from Touching the Void

The movie presents a docudrama of Joe Simpson’s book Touching the Void. The director, Kevin MacDonald develops the movie though recreations and interviews with Joe Simpson and Simon Yates. They describe their first ascent climb up the 20,000+ feet Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. For those of you who have not read the book, the ascent involved mixed climbing up extremely difficult pitches in bad weather conditions. After they attained the summit, the survival adventure began in earnest when Simpson severely broke his leg and had to be lowered down a steep face. On the last lowering pitch, Yates faced the dilemma of either a) cutting the rope and dropping Simpson into a crevasse, or b) being pulled over a cliff and having them both perish. He cut the rope. The remainder of the epic climb involved Simpson’s arduous escape from the crevasse and crawl back to camp across a glacier and the terminal moraines. Despite knowing how it ends the movie still raises the hair on your neck and sucks the air out of your lungs. It clearly is a must-see movie for any alpine climber.

	photo from Touching the Void

The movie and book touch on ethical philosophical questions that hopefully few of us will ever face. According to second step of the Mountaineering Oriented First Aid (MOFA) we should approach the victim safely. Following this logic, during the process of rescue when faced with the question of him or me, Simpson suggests the pragmatic answer that justifies saving your own life first. Simpson says he would have cut the rope if he faced that same dilemma. But the guilt and ridicule that followed from having made that decision haunted Yates and led to Simpson writing the book to exonerate his climbing partner.

Other take-home messages include never overextending yourself and remembering that most climbing accidents happen on the way down. Perhaps the most important lesson comes from the efforts of Simpson to self-evacuate and survive against seemingly impossible odds. Simpson described how he had to continue to make decisions to keep going and find a way out of the crevasse when he seemed hopelessly trapped. He also describes setting very small goals in order to keep going and not give up hope. So if any of us are ever faced with a similar situation whether it be crawling with a shattered leg or cutting off our hand to escape from a crushing boulder, we should always remember that we hold an inner strength to survive that defies logic and explanation. But the important thing is to find ways to continue to maintain hope so you can survive.

	photo from Touching the Void

If you haven’t seen the movie then I highly recommend seeing it. When the DVD comes out it would be worth considering for a primer for rescue methods. It also justifies the Mountaineers’ attempts to instill safety and improve skill sets so that our climbing thrills don’t exceed our skills. We never want to end up on either end of a cut rope.