Touching The Void Page #2

We were actually scared, that

we would get to an impass,

where we couldn't climb any further up.

Because we knew we wouldn't

be able to get back down,

not what we've already climbed.

We were climbing ourselves into a trap.

And not only that, we could see this

And so it was with great

relief that by 14:00,

we got onto the north

ridge and on the west face.

And we vowed that we didn't want to

go near any of the flutings again.

We were pretty tired, by the

time we got onto the ridge,

I was knackered. And

I remember thinking,

"Oh sod it, we've done the face,"

"now I can't really be bothered

to go all the way up there"

And then we thought, "Hang

on, we've come all this way,"

"we might as well stand on the top"

I don't particularly like summits,

because 80% of accidents happen on descent.

We decided before we even climbed the

face that we were going to come down

the north ridge of the

mountain, down to a cul

between the mountain Siula Grande

and another mountain called Yerupaja.

and then we'd be able to abseil

down the smaller section of the face.

Already the clouds were coming

in from the east. Big clouds.

We expected this ridge to

be quite straightforward,

quite an easy way to descend.

We were hoping, we would

be able to sort of walk.

And it turned out to be very difficult.

It was horrendous.

Vertical on the west side, with the

cornices overhanging the west side,

and on the east side steep

fleetings running down 100m below us.

It was a shock. And

it was quite dangerous.

It all got a bit out of

control. That stage of things.

Half an hour to an hour after

leaving the summit, we were lost.

We were in the wild now,

we couldn't see anything.

Then we got like a little break

in the clouds and I saw the ridge,

so I started climbing back up to it.

I didn't know it was the side

of the ridge I was on, but

it was actually an enormous

cornice, an overhang of snow and ice,

and I was walking up over the top of it.

I was left hanging, looking

down, as all this snow and ice

then fell away from me, down the

west side of the Siula Grande.

I got back up on the ridge

and shouted then to Joe

that I'd found the

ridge, like that, I said,

"I found the ridge, Joe!"

We'd hoped to go down that day,

but by the time it got dark,

we were still very high.

Still at 6000m.

And that night, as we made

a brew, the gas ran out.

It was pretty obvious

the following morning

that we descended the

worst part of the ridge.

And I was pretty confident that we'd

get back down to the base camp that day.

I thought at that stage it was pretty

much in the bag I suppose, the whole climb.

I was ahead of Simon,

and suddenly there was this

vertical wall, bisecting the ridge.

I then get on my hands and knees, and

hammer both my axes into the ice at the top

and then lower myself off the ice cliff.

When you hammer the axe in, you listen

to the sound it makes. And you look at it.

Now I was hanging with both axes,

right. I took the hammer out, and

what I wanted to do is now

place it in the vertical wall.

And I swung, and the pick

went in, and it just made a...

just a strange sound.

And I thought, "Well, I'll take

it out, make a good placement."

So I just wanted to put bona... dead

solid axe placements in. All the way down.

And I was about to

swing at the ice again

The pain is... came

flooding down my thigh

and my knee was very, very very painful

The impact drove my lower leg

straight through my knee joint.

As the bone went into my tibia it

split the tibial plateau straight off

and carried on up.

Quite wild, the pain now. I

couldn't cope with it at first.

I just breathed on and it started to

go and I can remember looking across

to the west and seeing that we

were level with the summit of Rasac,

so I had a height gauge, where we were.

and I just thought, "f***,

I can't have broken my leg",

"If I have broken my leg I'm dead."

And then the rope went slack.

I knew that meant that

Simon was coming towards me.

I couldn't feel any bone under anything.

I brought my hand down,

there's no blood on it,

and the pain had gone down a little bit.

And I thought, maybe I

was being a bit whacked,

I'd just torn a ligament or something.

I tried to stand on it

I felt all the bone go, all grating and

everything and I knew it was broken then.

The look that he gave

to me sticks in my mind

A look of shock and desperation

and a sort of terror.

Lots of things in a single look.

And he said, "Are you ok?"

I think it did occur to me to say,

"Yeah, I'm fine". That was stupid.

I think I said, "No,

I've broken my leg".

Immediately, just doom. I

thought "god, we're stuffed".

We're gonna be doing well if

either of us gets out of this now.

It did come into my mind, just thinking,

"If he slips off the side of the

mountain now, then I can just clear off,"

"and leave him and get myself down and

I don't have to have all the hassle,"

"of trying to deal with him and

with the situation we're in".

He gave me these painkillers which

were effectively headache tablets.

And he didn't really

talk about anything.

It was almost as if he...

He knew, what this meant.

He knew, and I knew, that he

was going to have to leave me.

He could have said something like

"I'm just going to get some help"

and I'd gone "right, yeah"

'Cause I knew there wasn't any help.

That'd been an easy

way for him to say it.

I didn't think we really seriously

thought that there was any choice

I couldn't put my finger on it, why

I thought something had happened.

And I started to think "Is one of

them dead, or are both of them dead?"

Even "If one of them is dead", not

"which one do I want to be dead", but

"if one comes back,

who do I want it to be?"

It's kind of, quite cold

to say it, but I guess

I would rather have it

would have been Simon.

I thought, "oh, he's not leaving"

I calmed down a bit and

managed to focus myself again

to think how I was going to

get him down the mountain.

We discussed, between us, what

we were going to have to do.

We thought, well, we got

And if we tie them together we have a

So I tied to one end and

Simon tied to the other,

in theory he could lower me down 100m.

To really get anchors to

lower him from that do matter,

what I did was cut a bucket in the

snow, sit in there and brace myself.

And I sort of lay down between his legs.

And Simon started lowering then.

I'd lower him one rope length, 50m,

and then the knot would come

up between the two ropes.

Now the knot would not go

through the belay plates.

So he would stop me.

I would stand on my

left leg, my good leg,

so that I could get

the weight off the rope.

I gave him enough slack to

be able to unclip the rope

thread the rope back through the lowering

device, with the knot on the other side

clip it back to himself and

lower me the remaining 50m.

He'd make himself reasonably secure,

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