In June 1985, two young British climbers stood on the summit of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. Joe Simpson was 25. His partner, Simon Yates, was only 21. They had just completed a "pure" alpine-style ascent of the West Face, a feat that should have been the highlight of their lives.
Then the world broke.
On the way down, Joe slipped. A short fall, really, but the impact drove his tibia through his knee joint. In the world of high-altitude mountaineering, a shattered leg at 20,000 feet is usually a death sentence. Most people know the broad strokes of what happened next—the rope was cut, the partner was left for dead, and the "ghost" crawled back to camp. But honestly, the armchair ethics people debate online often miss the gritty reality of what actually happened on that ice face.
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The 3,000-Foot Gamble
You’ve got to understand the sheer desperation of their plan. Simon didn't just look at Joe's leg and say, "See ya." He spent hours trying the impossible. He tied two 150-foot ropes together and began lowering Joe 300 feet at a time.
It was a brutal, repetitive rhythm. Lower Joe. Joe screams in agony as his leg snagged on ice. Joe reaches a stance. Simon climbs down to join him. Repeat. They did this for 3,000 feet in a howling blizzard. They were actually winning. They were nearly at the glacier when the geography of the mountain betrayed them.
Joe slid over an unseen edge.
Because of the storm and the curve of the mountain, Simon couldn't see that Joe was now dangling over a massive crevasse. He wasn't on snow anymore; he was spinning in mid-air.
Why Simon Yates Actually Cut the Rope
This is the moment that defined both men's lives. Simon was sitting in a "bucket" he’d dug in the snow, holding Joe’s dead weight. For over an hour and a half, he sat there. The rope was slowly pulling him out of his seat. If he moved, they both fell. If he stayed, the cold would kill them both.
People ask: Why didn't Joe just climb the rope?
He tried. His fingers were so frostbitten he couldn't grip the thin prusik cords. He was helpless.
When Simon finally pulled out his knife and sliced the tensioned rope, it wasn't an act of betrayal. It was a mathematical necessity. If the rope stayed intact, two people died. If the rope was cut, maybe one lived.
When Joe felt the line go slack and plummeted into the blackness of the crevasse, he didn't feel anger. He felt a weird sense of relief that the waiting was over. He hit a snow bridge 50 feet down. Miraculously, he wasn't killed.
The Crawl Through the Dark
The middle section of Joe Simpson Touching the Void is where the story turns from a mountaineering accident into something almost supernatural. Joe was at the bottom of a crevasse with a shattered leg, no food, and no water. He could have tried to climb out, but he knew he couldn't.
So he went down.
He lowered himself deeper into the darkness, hoping for a hole at the bottom. He found one. A tiny pilot light of sunshine filtered through a gap in the ice. He squeezed through and began a three-day crawl across the glacier and the boulder-strewn moraine.
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Basically, he was a skeleton held together by Gore-Tex and sheer willpower. He started hallucinating. He heard music. He became obsessed with the smell of the base camp. He crawled over miles of sharp rocks, dragging his dead leg behind him, leaving a literal trail of blood and skin.
What Most People Get Wrong About the Aftermath
When Joe finally reached the camp, he arrived just hours before Simon and their friend Richard Hawking were set to leave. He was so unrecognizable—burnt by the sun, emaciated, and covered in filth—that they almost didn't believe it was him.
Here is the part that drives me crazy: the public reaction.
When the story got out, the climbing community in the UK went after Simon Yates. They called him a coward. They said you never cut the rope. But Joe Simpson became Simon’s fiercest defender. He dedicated the book to him. He pointed out that Simon stayed and tried to save him long after any "rational" person would have given up.
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Honestly, if Simon hadn't cut that rope, Joe wouldn't have lived to write the book. He would have frozen to death dangling in the air, and Simon would have been pulled off the mountain with him.
The Reality of Siula Grande Today
Joe underwent six surgeries. Doctors told him he’d never climb again. He proved them wrong within two years, though he eventually walked away from the high-stakes game in 2009.
If you're looking for lessons from this saga, it isn't just about "never giving up." That’s a cliché. The real takeaway is about the ethics of impossible choices.
Actionable Insights from the Void
- Decision Fatigue is Real: In a crisis, your first instinct is often emotional. Simon's "heroic" attempt to lower Joe for 3,000 feet was amazing, but it nearly cost both their lives. Sometimes, the "cold" choice is the only one that allows for any survival at all.
- The Power of Micro-Goals: Joe didn't think about the five miles to camp. He thought about reaching that next rock. Then the next. If you're overwhelmed, stop looking at the horizon. Look at your feet.
- Forgiveness is Practical: Joe’s refusal to blame Simon didn't just save Simon’s reputation; it saved Joe’s own mental health. Carrying resentment is heavy lifting you can't afford when you're already broken.
If you haven't seen the 2003 documentary, watch it. But read the book first. The prose captures a psychological "void" that no camera can quite reach. It’s a reminder that the human body is surprisingly fragile, but the human mind is a terrifyingly durable thing.
To dig deeper into the technical side of what went wrong, you might want to look into alpine-style vs. expedition-style climbing. The "fast and light" approach they chose is exactly why there was no rescue team coming to save them. They were truly, as the title says, in the void.
Next Step: You should research the "Prusik knot" and why it failed Joe in the crevasse. Understanding that small technical failure makes Simon's choice to cut the rope feel much more inevitable.**