welsh
Junkmaster
Has anyone seen this film?
A bit-
More-
http://www.answers.com/topic/touching-the-void
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379557/
My wife and I saw it yesterday and were impressed. Not just for the adventure but that there are some lessons that can be learned from it.
For example-
(1) You've always have to make decisions, even if they are bad ones. It's when you stop making decisions that you're fucked.
(2) If you all into a deep hole that you can't climb out of, get to the bottom and you may find the light of day.
(3) When hiking through a maze of lethal cravasses, it's sometimes wise to follow someone else's footsteps.
What about you? Did you come up with any lessons or can you draw lessons from the fim?
A bit-
In 1985, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates set out to climb the forbidding 21,000-foot Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes - the only mountain in the Peruvian range that hadn't yet been conquered. Young, fit and skilled, climbers Simpson and Yates were confident they would succeed. What happened on their trip has since become a mountaineering legend about human endurance and the will to survive. Based on Simpson's international best-seller, the PBS special TOUCHING THE VOID airs Sunday, November 21, 2004. The film, which combines dramatic and documentary techniques, was shot on location in the Peruvian Andes by Academy Award-winning director Kevin Macdonald. Brendan Mackey portrays Joe Simpson and Nicholas Aaron portrays Simon Yates.
Simpson and Yates' method of climbing was Alpine style, moving quickly up a mountain with the barest of supplies and no series of base camps. This approach left absolutely no room for error. Any problem they might encounter along the way would have grave consequences.
Following a successful three-and-a-half-day ascent, disaster struck. Simpson fell and broke several bones in his right leg. His lower leg pushed through his knee joint, crippling him. At that altitude and in those remote conditions, this was effectively a death sentence.
With no food or water, severe dehydration and the ugly specter of hypothermia before them, the climbers knew they had to get off the mountain -fast. Yates was determined to find a way to get his friend home. Each had 150 feet of rope, which they tied together so that Yates could lower Simpson down the mountain 300 feet at a time. The only complication was that Yates had to stop after each 150 feet and signal for Simpson to give him enough slack so that he could get the knot past his harness.
Each drop down the mountain was agonizing for Simpson, but Yates had no choice except to ignore his partner's cries. Both their lives were at stake.
Things were progressing unexpectedly well when Simpson failed to respond to Yates' signal. Unable to move any further and having no idea why Simpson was not pulling at the rope, Yates positioned himself against the mountain face and waited in the blinding storm. He held onto the rope with all of his strength, all too aware that eventually his muscles would fail and both would plummet down the incline.
What Yates couldn't know was that he had lowered the injured Simpson over the edge of a crevasse. Simpson was hanging in midair from the sheer vertical face of the mountain.
Simpson remained suspended, unable to climb back up the rope with frostbitten fingers and unable to communicate with Yates above him. Yates hung onto the rope for an hour, with his strength ebbing away and Simpson's weight on the rope slowly pulling him towards the edge of the cliff. Eventually Yates realized he was faced with an unthinkable dilemma: he could hang on to the rope until they were both pulled off the mountain or let go, assuring his friend's death, but possibly saving his own life.
Logic would suggest that it's better for only one man to die rather than both. But the biggest taboo for any climber is cutting the rope that binds him to his partner. For a climber, it is anathema.
Certain they would both soon be pulled to their deaths, Yates cut the rope ...
More-
http://www.answers.com/topic/touching-the-void
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379557/
My wife and I saw it yesterday and were impressed. Not just for the adventure but that there are some lessons that can be learned from it.
For example-
(1) You've always have to make decisions, even if they are bad ones. It's when you stop making decisions that you're fucked.
(2) If you all into a deep hole that you can't climb out of, get to the bottom and you may find the light of day.
(3) When hiking through a maze of lethal cravasses, it's sometimes wise to follow someone else's footsteps.
What about you? Did you come up with any lessons or can you draw lessons from the fim?