Mountaineering evening that’ll have you on a knife-edge

Sunday 03 June 2018

In 1985 aged just 21 mountaineer Simon Yates made a decision that was to define the rest of his life.

A friend, Joe Simpson, whom he was roped to, had fallen down a crevice. Simon couldn’t see or hear him and feared he was dead. Slowly, he too was being dragged into the abyss. What to do? He cut the rope…

It saved Yates’ life. But what of Simpson?

Although Simon couldn’t know it, Joe wasn’t dead, he was dangling on the end of the rope unable to move. When it was cut he fell 50 feet smashing his legs and left abandoned, but determined to survive.  Four days later he crawled out of the crevice and reached base camp as a shattered and distraught Simon was packing up to head home. He’d already burnt all of Joe’s clothes. It was the days before mobile and satellite phones, and the duo had to organise their own evacuation, first to the Peruvian capital of Lima, and then back to Britain. It was an epic.

The incident has become legendary in mountaineering circles thanks to Simpson’s best selling book, Touching the Void, which was later made into a film, and by lecture tours given by both Simpson and Yates. Next week islanders will get to hear Yates’ side of the story first hand. He’s giving a talk at the Opera House – My Mountain Life – on Friday at 20:00.

Pictured: Since his epic South American climb in 1983 Simon Yates has travelled the world, including Antarctica, in each of new mountaineering challenges.

In the 32 years since the incident which brought Yates to public attention he has gone on to achieve a string of mountaineer firsts, but nothing has captured public attention as much as that near fatal expedition to South America in 1985.

Does he regret cutting the rope? Does he think he’s been made a scapegoat? Are he and Simpson still friends? What does he think of the book and film Touching the Void? Has it been a two-edged sword – launching his own writing career and packing out lecture halls across the country – but at the expense of him being cast as the ‘villain’? What has he gone on to do since the accident, and what are his plans for the future? Find out more by heading off to the Opera House on Friday. And, if you’ve got a question for him and he doesn’t cover it in his talk, you’ll have the opportunity to ask him in the short Q and A session which will finish off the evening.