Joe Simpson

The golden age of Himalayan mountaineering, from the mid-1970s to the 1980s, brought forth a generation of radical young climbers. With tiny budgets and high ambitions they pioneered fast and light, alpine-style expeditions on mountains such as Jannu, Nuptse, Everest and K2. In High Risk, Brian Hall recalls the outrageous adventures of eleven of his climbing friends who risked – and often lost – their lives to stand on some of the world’s highest peaks during a legendary period in mountaineering history.

As her hand slips from his grip, Patrick's life is shattered, forever changed... Trapped high on a high mountain face during the worst storm in living memory, a young man is forced to fight the brutal winter for his life - moments after his beloved wife is swept away forever across the ice.

While climbing in the Peruvian Andes, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates came face to face with disaster. Simpson fell and broke his leg and then was lost. As his partner Yates was starting to break camp four days later, Simpson crawled in through a blizzard. How both men overcame those four harrowing days is an epic chronicle of fear and friendship.

Touching the Void is the heart-stopping account of Joe Simpson's terrifying adventure in the Peruvian Andes.

Joe Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, had just reached the top of a 21,000-foot peak in the Andes when disaster struck. Simpson plunged off the vertical face of an ice ledge, breaking his leg. In the hours that followed, darkness fell and a blizzard raged as Yates tried to lower his friend to safety. Finally, Yates was forced to cut the rope, moments before he would have been pulled to his own death. The next three days were an impossibly grueling ordeal for both men. Yates, certain that Simpson was dead, returned to base camp consumed with grief and guilt over abandoning him. Miraculously, Simpson had survived the fall, but crippled, starving, and severely frostbitten was trapped in a deep crevasse. Summoning vast reserves of physical and spiritual strength, Simpson crawled over the cliffs and canyons of the Andes, reaching base camp hours before Yates had planned to leave. How both men overcame the torments of those harrowing days is an epic tale of fear, suffering, and survival, and a poignant testament to unshakable courage and friendship.

The author reveals the inner truth of climbing, exploring the frailties of the body and the power of the mind. He sees his attempt on the Eiger as the culmination of his climbing career, his narrative takes the reader through an avalanche in South America to ice-climbing in the Alps.

In 1992, an Indian climber was left to die on the South Col of Mount Everest by other climbers who watched his feebly waving hand from their tent.

What happened to Joe, and how the pair dealt with the psychological traumas that resulted when Simon was forced into the appalling decision to cut the rope, makes not only an epic of survival but a compelling testament of friendship.

In Storms of Silence Joe Simpson recalls the severe snowstorm which put an end to an attempt with four others on Gangchempo and the infection which forced him to abandon the climb on Cho Oyu in tibet. He becomes obsessed with stories of Chinese brutality in the old world Tibet they overran by force 40 years ago.

When Simon Yates cut the rope and sent his friend plummeting to an ordeal few mountaineers can have contemplated, the outcome was totally unpredictable. This extraordinary memoir is Joe Simpson's attempt to find catharsis and some explanation for the urge he felt since childhood to measure fear and embrace the unknown.