Touching the Void

Touching the Void is a 2003 docudrama survival film directed by Kevin Macdonald and starring Brendan Mackey, Nicholas Aaron, and Ollie Ryall. The plot concerns Joe Simpson and Simon Yates' near-fatal descent after making the first successful ascent of the West Face of Siula Grande in the Cordillera Huayhuash in the Peruvian Andes, in 1985. It is based on Simpson's 1988 book of the same name. Critically acclaimed, Touching the Void was listed in PBS's "100 Greatest Documentaries of All Time". The Guardian described it as "the most successful documentary in British cinema history". Summary In 1985, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, both experienced mountaineers, successfully ascended the previously unclimbed West Face of Siula Grande in Peru. After leaving the summit their descent by way of the North Ridge proves unexpectedly difficult in, at times, stormy weather conditions. Shortly after the pair leave the summit Yates falls through a cornice and plummets down the 4500 ft face they had just climbed but his fall is arrested by their climbing ropes. After a bivouac high on the peak, the pair continue their descent the following morning but then Simpson falls whilst climbing down an ice cliff on the ridge and, landing awkwardly, suffers a badly broken leg. The pair commence a self-rescue with Yates lowering Simpson with ropes down a steep, 3000 ft, snow and ice slope while the weather deteriorates into a fierce storm. The total length of rope the pair have is 300 ft so the lowering process has to be undertaken in a series of repeat manoeuvres. The pair had almost reached the relative safety of the glacier when Yates inadvertently lowers Simpson over the edge of a large cliff, leaving him suspended on the rope in mid-air. Yates arrests his partner's fall, but cannot see the predicament he is in, nor hear him over the howling wind. Unable to pull Simpson back up the cliff and gradually losing traction in the loose snow, Yates realizes, after about an hour and a half, that he is gradually being pulled from his unbelayed stance and will eventually fall in excess of 150 feet to his almost certain death. Yates decides that the only option available to him to avoid being pulled from the cliff is to cut the rope connecting him with Simpson.