Touching the Void

I'd watched a film named 'Touching the Void'. 168 hours of climbing uphill, descending and looking for way out. It's fully adventurous.

In 1985, 2 young British men, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, traveled to a remote corner of Peru. Ambitious mountaineers, their aim was to conquer the unclimbed west face of a notorious 21000ft peak- 'Siula Grande'. By the time they went to Peru, Joe was 25 and Simon was 21. They had done a lot of climbing in the Alps. To climb mountains that have not been climbed before, or a new route up a mountain, is what their climbing life had been moving towards. It was the last big mountain face in the range of mountains that hadn't been climbed. There's a great unknown there and what's so compelling is stepping into that unknown...

The mountains all around seemed very big compared to the mountains in the Alps. They used 3 days to get onto the north ridge and off the west face successfully. '80% of accident happen on descent'. They were almost dehydrated under -80 degree Celsius. When they made their way down from the hill, Joe fall down suddenly and the impact drove his lower leg straight through his knee joint. He'd broke his leg! Simon abandoned Joe by cutting the rope on him under the worst situation to survive. It then made Joe drop into a large crevasse. But it didn't kill Joe as he fall on a slanting snow ground. However he did break his leg and couldn't move as well. Will Joe die under the cliff? No one knows about it. It was completely helpless and hopeless..

Simon reached and met their friend who was helping to look after their equipment in the campsite at the 5th day. Joe was still trapped and he crawled all the time to find the way out. There's a lot of obstacles in front of Joe and sometimes brought desperation to him. But Joe never gave up and tried and tried his best to survive. Times passed by, Simon found Joe at the 7th day.

Joe lost a third of his body weight during his ordeal. 2 years and 6 operations later Joe climbed again. He continues to climb today. Simon returned to England to face intense criticism from many in the climbing community for cutting the rope on his partner. Joe has always staunchly defended him. No one has ever successfully repeated Joe and Simon's climb to the summit of Siula Grande. Their story has become part of mountaineering legend.

This story is touching and worrying me. I can feel Joe's bravery on facing troubles. No one can be so persistent and courageous while facing such situation like that. This story has made me realize that human are absolutely small and have no idea with the environment. Joe, I'm proud of you!