Touching the Void
I've been reading Touching the Void by Joe Simpson.
It's fab. It's an amazing story told from the point of view of Joe as he is climbing in the Andies with a friend when he falls and breaks his legs. After sacrificing his personal safety to try and rescue him his partner leaves him, thinking he is dead, leaving Joe to crawl for three days at high altitude through snow with no food or water.
I don't know why I found it so amazing, partly the Mountain background maybe, but more to do with the need for human companionship and support that was met in such an instrinsic way by the two climbers. Something about the imtimacy that is found by needing one another, and thinking that you've lost one another. Something about the human spirit that can actually find an amazing amount of strength in order to pull away an experience of almost certain death.
It's fab. It's an amazing story told from the point of view of Joe as he is climbing in the Andies with a friend when he falls and breaks his legs. After sacrificing his personal safety to try and rescue him his partner leaves him, thinking he is dead, leaving Joe to crawl for three days at high altitude through snow with no food or water.
I don't know why I found it so amazing, partly the Mountain background maybe, but more to do with the need for human companionship and support that was met in such an instrinsic way by the two climbers. Something about the imtimacy that is found by needing one another, and thinking that you've lost one another. Something about the human spirit that can actually find an amazing amount of strength in order to pull away an experience of almost certain death.
posted by Nikki @ 7:55 pm
3 Comments:
At 9:29 pm,
David Jeanneret said…
I too enjoyed the book. On the other hand, my brother pointed out that they were pretty stupid. Climbing a mountaint that they had not really checked out first in unkown weather conditions. But the line that clinches it for me is: "Wish we had a compass"
I mean - what the smeg were they doing on that mountain without a compass!!
At 12:55 pm,
Anonymous said…
Have you seen the film? very good too.
Katie
At 12:19 am,
Nikki said…
No- I've not seen the film- glad I read the book first as I imagine the film is quite Hollywoodised and I'd have watched it and thought 'yeah right'.
I think climbing is different from Trecking- with climbing you can generally tell the direction you are going from the main features that you see- ie you know (hopefuly) which side of the mountain you started out on.
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