Here’s something to add to your
calendar tonight…or to Tivo. The epic true-life, albeit re-enacted film,
Touching the Void airs tonight on PBS. This is an excruciatingly
well-done film about two climbers Joe Simpson and Simon Yates who, in 1985, set out to climb the forbidding 21,000-foot
Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. This was the only mountain in the Peruvian range that hadn’t yet been summited.
These two experienced climbers ran into a series of serious problems that should have guaranteed death.
Simpson fell and broke several bones in his right leg. His lower leg pushed through his knee joint, crippling him.
They were without food or water, and becoming hypothermic. Yates tried to lower Simpson down the mountain with the
limited rope they had and at one point, though not knowing it, he had lowered his friend over a crevasse. Simpson hung
in midair over the vertical face of the mountain. Yates held on, but couldn’t do so forever. He had to make a
choice…perhaps the most awful choice any climber can imagine. Die with his friend, or cut the rope and save himself.
Watch the program to find out what happened.