Andes assault

THE next time you are with a friend, in the pub, the park, the playground or the pew, ask yourself how much you trust them.

Okay, so they are the keepers of your loves and lies, whinings and confidings, but what if you were linked by a rope?

What if you had a broken leg and were dangling in space from the side of a remote Andean mountain in sub-zero temperatures, thousands of feet up, lost in swirling snowstorms, the only thing preventing you from plummeting into the blackness below this single rope attached to the friend above.

But your friend has no sure foothold and your dead weight is slowly pulling him down as well. Pulling him to a shared death.

If he cuts the rope you will die, he will survive. Would your friend slice through that link? If the positions were reversed, would you wield the knife to the lifeline, singing with a tension so taut, a gentle kiss of steel on nylon is sufficient to sever the connection with a violent crack.

The physical burden is gone, a mental burden, a lifelong companion, is born.

Simon Yates cut that rope, letting his friend Joe Simpson fall.

In May 1985 when Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, two Sheffield lads, set out to scale the never-before-climbed West Face of the Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes, they were 25 and 21 years of age, respectively.

But these were no callow youths. Already veterans of some of the world's most unforgiving peaks they were fully aware of the risk involved. Both had lost friends on mountains. Both had witnessed lives extinguished by the impersonal brutality of their chosen sport.

Sport? In 1983 Joe Simpson and a companion, Ian Whittaker slept on a ledge in the French Alps when a sickening grinding roar was the only warning as they tumbled into a 2,000ft abyss. Somehow their safety rope held.

Trussed up in sleeping bags unable to help themselves, they dangled helplessly for 12 hours before their screams were fortunate enough to encounter ears.

They were plucked by helicopter from the mountainside. Simpson's companion, an older experienced climber, was shattered by the experience. He never climbed again.

Siula Grande, is a different proposition. The Alps, treacherous and all as they are, often swarm with climbers. Climbers to instigate the rescue of others fallen.

On Everest boiling up snow and ice to make your mug of hot beefy Bovril means finding snow that isn't a pile of frozen faeces, on what is fast becoming the planet's highest shitpile.

It is possible to be led up to the peak of the world's largest metaphor with no climbing experience other than scaling the heights of your obscenely fat wallet. People die in the Alps and Himalayas but there are also survivors of accidents.

The Siula Grande is in a truly remote part of the world. A bone-shaking country bus ride from Lima nosing 80 miles up into the mountain valleys leads to a remote little village. Then two days of walking over 28 miles of rough terrain to the ice mountains of the Cordillera Huayhuash.

There are no shops selling expensive polar fleeces and designer snow goggles. No hotels or bars heaving with adrenalin junkies. There are no helicopters. No native Sherpas to carry treble the western load. Just climbers and mountains.

Simpson and Yates set up camp by a lake in the lowlands. Richard Hawkins, a perpetual traveller they had run into in Lima, tagged along. Without equipment or training he wouldn't be climbing but would be handy to keep an eye on their non-climbing gear back at the camp.

And to raise the alarm or more likely inform next-of-kin should they not return.

For nearly ten days the two climbers attacked the various surrounding peaks, testing their fitness at an altitude of 18,000ft, getting a feel for the terrain and the unfamiliar weather conditions as hot air rising off the Amazon rainforests clattered into the sub-zero temperatures high in the Andes.

To the pair, largely schooled in the Alps, the erratic conditions kept them from attaining the lesser peaks, but they were finding their climbing rhythms on the ice mountains and pleased to discover the extent of their fitness. They were ready for Siula Grande.

Ice climbing is the sports most extreme discipline, as you climb not perilous vertical rock face but doubly treacherous vertical or even overhanging sheets of ice and frozen snow. Often it is necessary to dig through this snow to find some purchase for a piton or an ice screw.

Then there is the cold. The clawing, sucking cold that reaches the deepest marrow consuming the most energy of all in the fight to keep the body warm.

The pair began well. They climb well for a 1,000, 2,000 feet and settle for a hot brew. The sun is up, their jackets are off.

They resume. Rocks rain down. It is growing dark, time to dig out a protective hole in the snow and curl up for the night. A night of precarious, restless dreaming, tensing for the fall as the icy chill bites deeper and deeper.

They rise, sip on a hot brew, fingers stinging as blood searches out the frozen tips. Reconnaissance throws up further treachery ahead.

A shower of icicles, hundredweight's of frozen water draw first blood. The earlier exaltations are now replaced by the edgy rush of nervous adrenalin. Fear bubbles near the surface as talk becomes sullen and restricted to the necessary. Simpson stands on an open face, a drop of 4,000 feet below.

A long gap and a rope separate him from Yates, whose ice axes buried in the snow are the only anchor should Simpson fall. His left foot slips, the crampon points on his boot skittering on the rock. He tries to balance, legs trembling on the verge of slipping.

He shouts a warning to Yates, to brace for the sudden weight, hating the fear so obvious in his voice. He freezes. He is 'gripped'. Gradually, he calms and completes the few moves. Yates follows easily. No sympathy. A climber does not care to see the naked fear of his partner. It is useless yet infectious.

300 feet from the summit and they have to bivouac again for the night. The following day they ascend the final feet, tired, anti-climactic, like all peaks bagged.

A storm is moving in as they scope out their escape route, the North Ridge, fast obscured by clouds rolling up the East Face. Yates leading, they begin. Within ten minutes it is a total whiteout of heavy snow. Only the ropes feeding through Simpson's hand hint at Yates' presence.

Then a deep, heavy explosion erupts. The ropes slither through his hands and then tug sharply at his harness. Yates has fallen. A ridge cracked behind him. Great 20 foot square chunks of snow falling with him.

He is badly shaken. They bivouac again for the night and begin again the next day. Survival is now their only concern.

However, the escape route is proving far worse than they had ever considered. Simpson is leading down but is halted by an ice cliff. The snow is too soft to take an ice stake to abseil down. He finds a weakness, a crevasse running down that will offer some purchase. His axes bite into the ice.

It holds fast and solid. He lowers himself over the edge, hanging onto the ice axe, reaching to his left side to slap the other hammer solid into the wall.

After a few blows it bites. He doesn't trust it. Removes it to try again. It must be perfect before he removes the other axe from the lip of the cliff.

As the hammer comes out there is a sharp cracking sound and his right hand is dragged down. He is falling before landing on the slope at the base of the cliff.

Both knees locked on impact. A shattering, tearing, splintering sound spills from below his waist as the bone in his lower leg is driven right up through the knee joint. He tumbles down the slope. Yates will be ripped from the mountain.

But then a violent stop. A molten bubble of hot pain swells from his groin to his ankles, his breathing coming in ragged gasps, his eyes smarting with hot tears. Nausea sweeps over him. Not just the pain. He is dead! A broken ankle in the mountains; it is a death warrant. Yates will have to leave him. He will be left alone to die.

His mind races. Can he tell him that he has only hurt the leg, not broken it. He fights for calm.

Yates' head appears over the edge. What happened?

"I fell. The edge gave way," Simpson replies. He pauses, then as unemotionally as he can he says: "I've broken my leg."

Yates' expression changes instantly. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

He stares at Simpson. Long and hard, and then turns away sharply. But not before Simpson registers the look on his face.

The pity, and more; the distance afforded the wounded animal that can no longer be helped. Simpson is overcome by dread. Yates says little. All they have for the pain is a few paracetemol. On his own, without the injured man, he can descend swiftly to safety.

"How are you doing?" he asks.

"I've had it, Simon, I can't see myself getting down at this rate," Simpson replies.

If he had expected an answer he didn't get one.

Yates resolves to lower him off the mountain. They have no more snow stakes so he will have to hollow out little bucket seats in the snow to take his weight for long enough to lower Simpson 300 foot the distance of the rope.

They make steady progress but the no longer moving Simpson is succumbing to the cold. Each jolt, each jarring impact as the crampons on the foot of his bad leg catch, launch fireballs of pain, nauseous mouthfuls of bile.

They keep descending with a storm increasing around them. Simpson can no longer grasp the object of lowering, drifting mentally, half-lucid, wracked with pain, pressing his face into the freezing snow to maintain consciousness.

Yates grimly continues his endless physical battle to lower him 300 feet without a break. He tries to estimate the distance left on this ice slope to reassure Simpson. Maybe four more lowers? He was guessing. His hands are badly frostbitten, the draining of resources painted on a drawn, pinched face.

They had aimed to make the descent at a slight angle following a relatively safer route but had not allowed for the dead weight of Simpson. It was like a plumbline dropping straight down. Suddenly the slope is getting steeper.

Simpson tries frantically to brake with his arms. He screams a frantic warning but his cries are swallowed in the thick snow cloud.

The snow is too loose to accept the frantic stabs of his ice axe and then, his feet are in space. He adjusts to a seated position absorbing the hopelessness of his situation. His frozen hands are useless, the gusting wind tosses him about.

Yates will not be able to lift him, he cannot climb. He estimates he has maybe two hours before the creeping cold overtakes.

He becomes calm, drugged by the incessant barrages of intolerable pain, and then by turns, is consumed with fury, screaming blind oaths into the wind and snow. He was dying, and his friend Simon with him. The rope bounces, he slips down a few inches. He was pulling his friend with him, to their death.

Above Yates clung grimly, the snow seat beneath him shrinking. The rope edges slowly down, he can't hold it. He is being dragged down, down, down.

The knife! The thought comes from nowhere. He fumbles desperately in his pack, panic swamping him. He feels the smooth handle, tugs his mitt off with his teeth, his wooden blackened fingers trying to grip. He has made the decision.

There is no other option. The metal blade sticks to his lips when he opens it with his teeth. He reaches down. No pressure needed. The rope, iron-taut explodes at the blade's touch, Yates flying backwards as the downward pressure vanishes. He is shaking; numb, shocked, silent. He has killed his friend, Joe.

Simon Yates made it off the mountain. Exhausted, starving, dehydrated.

Hollow and torn with guilt. More incredibly, taking three days longer, with no food or water, clawing, hauling, hopping, crawling, drifting in and out of consciousness, hallucinating with pain and exhaustion, more often closer to death than life yet driven by the most elemental forces of human nature, Simpson too escaped Siula Grande.

Touching the Void by Joe Simpson (now a film) is a nigh unbelievable tale of the heroism of two ­ yes, two men. It has become a phenomenon, not just of mountaineering literature, but beyond. In cancer wards its inspiration can be as important as medicine.

In this age of Discovery channels and National Geographic, there is a cosy dullness, a suburban safety to our visions of these remote cathedrals of ice and rock ­ and death.

Simpson is not just a climber, he is a beautiful writer. His tale is mesmeric but his adventuring spirit is flushed through with a poetry that had me gathering my quilt a little tighter around, seeking footholds in the mattress.

It is dedicated as follows: To Simon Yates, for a debt I can never repay.

And to those friends who have gone to the mountains and have not returned.