Touching the Void: Thoughts

Touching the Void is a gripping story that kept my adrenaline pumping from beginning to end. My heart was literally pounding out of my chest at times as I journeyed alongside Joe and Simon up and over the west face Siula Grande. I never realized before just how perilous mountain climbing actually is! Even before the accident and the subsequent escape attempt, they were constantly balancing on a razor-thin edge between life and death. Think of it, at any moment the floor beneath your feet (or your sleeping bag for that matter) can just disappear!

“There was no warning. No crack. One minute I was climbing, the next I was falling. It [the ridge] must have broken away 40 feet back from the edge. It broke behind me, I think; or under my feet. Either way, it took me down instantly. It was so fast!”

But honestly, it wasn’t the thrill of adventure, or the heart-dropping adrenaline rush that I most enjoyed about this book. It was the internal struggle of a man faced with his own mortality that kept me turning pages. Joe Simpson was able to put into words some of man’s deepest fears, in a way that those of us sitting safely at home on our couches could almost relate to. After his rope is cut and Joe finds himself alive and teetering on a ledge inside of a bottomless crevasse, he is forced to face the fact that he is going to die, and there is nothing at all he can do about it.

“In the end, I decided that three days would pass. It was sheltered in the crevasse, and with my sleeping bag I could survive a good few days. I imagined how long it would seem; a long long period of twilight, and darkness, drifting from exhausted sleep into half-consciousness. Maybe the last half would be dreamless sleeping, ebbing away quietly. I thought carefully of the end. It wasn’t how I had ever imagined it. It seemed pretty sordid. I hadn’t expected a blaze of glory when it came, nor had I thought it would be like this slow pathetic fade into nothing. I didn’t want it to be like that.”

Against all odds, Joe literally crawls out of the crevasse and back to base camp, arriving just hours before his companions are planning to break camp. How was he able to overcome such a monumental struggle? He spoke frequently of a "voice" inside of him that urged him on. Every time he wanted to rest, or give up entirely, the voice would quietly pester him until he pushed on. It is this unnamed voice inside of every man that pushes us on when we think we have given our last. It is this voice which drives us onward into the unknown. It is this voice which I hope to become more familiar with through “The Man’s Book Club”!

My rating: 8 out of 10

January's Book: Touching the Void

Joe Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, had just reached the top of a 21,000-foot peak in the Andes when disaster struck. Simpson plunged off the vertical face of an ice ledge, breaking his leg. In the hours that followed, darkness fell and a blizzard raged as Yates tried to lower his friend to safety. Finally, Yates was forced to cut the rope, moments before he would have been pulled to his own death. 


The next three days were an impossibly grueling ordeal for both men. Yates, certain that Simpson was dead, returned to base camp consumed with grief and guilt over abandoning him. Miraculously, Simpson had survived the fall but, crippled, starving, and severely frostbitten, was trapped in a deep crevasse. Summoning vast reserves of physical and spiritual strength, Simpson hopped, hobbled, and crawled over the cliffs and canyons of the Andes, reaching the base hours before Yates had planned to break camp. 


How both men overcame the torments of those harrowing days is an epic tale of fear, suffering, and survival; a poignant testament to unshakable courage and friendship.


(Summary from Goodreads.com)