Touching the Void - Joe Simpson

We took the customary summit photos and ate some chocolate. I felt the usual anticlimax. What now? It was a vicious circle. If you succeed with one dream, you come back to square one and it's not long before you're conjuring up another, alightly harder, a bit more ambitious - a bit more dangerous. I didn't like the thought of where it might be leading me. As if, in some strange way, the very nature of the game was controlling me, taking me towards a logical but frightening conclusion; it always unsettled me, this moment of reach the summit, this sudden stillness and quiet after the storm, which gave me time to wonder at what I was doing and sense a niggling doubt that perhaps I was inerorably losing control - was I here purely for pleasure or was it egotism? Did I really want to come back for more? But these moments were also good times, and I knew that the feelings would pass. Then I could excuse them as morbid pessimistic fears that had no sound basis.

The blurred line between life and death - when does one know you crossed it:
"The cold was taking me again.  I felt its insidious touch on my back.  I wouldn't survive this night, that was for sure, I but no longer cared. The notion of living or dying had long since become tangled.  The past days merged into a blur of real events and madness, and now I seemed fixed in a limbo between the two.  Alive, dead, was there that much difference? I raised my head and howled a name into the darkness: 'SIIIIMMMmoonnnn...'"

"Snowflakes feathered against my face; the wind tugged at my clothing.  The night remained black. Warm tears mingled with the cold melted snow on my face.  I wanted it to end. I felt destroyed.  For the first time in many days I accepted that I had finally come to the end of my strength.  I needed someone, anyone.  This dark night-storm was taking me and I had no more will to resist.  I cried for many things. but mostly for not having someone to be with in this awful night. I let my head fall to my chest, ignored the darkness, and let the anger and pain weep. It was too much for me. I just couldn't keep on; too much of everything."

"I cupped the mug in my gloved hands and crouched over it, feelig the steam wettign my face.  Simon moved away but the girls remained squatting near the door smiling at me. There was something unreal about them sitting there in the sun, watching me drink tea.  Their wide-hipped peasant skirts and flower-strewn hats seemed very strange.  What were they doing here? My mind seemed to be running off at tangents from second to second so that I couldn't fully grasp what was happening. I had got here safely. I understood the tents, and Simon and Richard, but not these weirdly dress Peruvians.  I decided that the best thing to do was ignore them and concentrate on my tea.  It scalded my mouth with the first sip.  The gloves which protected my frozen fingers how hot it would be.  I gasped and blowe quickly, trying to cool the tip of my tongue.  The girls giggled."

"Ultimately, we all have to look after ourselves, whether on mountains or in day to day life.  In my view that is not a licence to be selfish, for only by taking good care of ourselves are we abel to help others. Away from the mountains, in the complexity of everyday life, the price of neglectig this responsibility might be a marriage breaking down, a disruptive child, a business failing or a house repossesssed.  In the mountains the penalty for neglect can often be death."

"Oddly enough the physical and emothonal trauma experienced in Peru in 1985 did not change my life. It was the success of Touching the Void and my future writing and speaking career that materially changed me.  The making of the film will no doubt brign further changes and challenges.

I often woder what would have happened to my life if we had not had the accident on Siula Grande.  A part of me thinks that I would have gone on to climb harder and hard routes takign greater risks each time. Given the toll of friends over teh years I'm not confident that I would be alive today. In those days I was a penniless, narrow-minded, anarchic, abrasive and ambitious mountaineer.  The accident opened up a whole new world for me.  Whthout it I would never have discovered hidden talents for writing and public speaking. Despite having worked hard I do sometimes wonder whether I just got lucky?

In Peru we had gone to unusual lengths to take the ultimate risk and yet despite all the pain and trauma it now seems a small price to pay for such an inspiring adventure.  Isn't memory a wonderful deceiver? Almost losing everything in Peru was a sensation quite as life-enhancing as winning.  I seem to have been on a worryingly long winning streak ever since. Where will it all end?

It is a hot sunny day in Sheffield as I struggle to write my seventh book, a novel.  I'm trying not to be distracted by a forthcoming fly fishing holiday in Ireland followed by a fourth attempt on the North Face of the Eiger.  A busy autumn of speaking engagements and publicity for the release of the film beckons. Fighting for my life on Siula Grande seventeen years ago seems to have turned me into a successful businessman, which is very odd...

Life can deal you an amazing hand.  Do you play it steady, bluff like crazy or go all in? I'll never know."