Touching the Void by Joe Simpson

Touching the Void by Joe Simpson

This book is awesome! I love ice climbing, so its even cooler because of that. :)
Anyway, Joe Simpson and his friend Simon go climbing in the Andes and climb a 21,000 foot mountain to reach the summit and to climb down the coveted east face, which no one had succeeded in climbing down before.
This takes place in 1985, and Joe and Simon take photos of their journey, until the accident on the east face. Joe was climbing down, with Simon up top, when he fell and broke his leg. Very, very bad. If your up that high, breaking your leg is essentially a death sentence. Simon decided that he would lower him down 300 feet at a time until they got to the bottom. A blizzard starts and gets so bad that niether can hear the other after maybe 20 feet and visibility is very low. When they are almost to the bottom, maybe a thousand or so feet from the base camp, Joe falls into a crevasse and Simon starts getting dragged down with him. Since Simon cannot see Joe, and since neither had seen a crevasse while climbing up, Simon thinks that there must have been something they didn't see, but cant figure out what it would be. Simon keeps slipping and Joe keeps falling when Simon makes the choice to cut the rope. He cuts it and Joe begins the first part of his journey on his own. It's a race to make it to base camp before Simon leaves, otherwise it's all been in vain. He climbs out of the crevasse (read it to find out how!) and crawls and limps his way back to base camp. It's an amazing story of human endurance in extreme conditions.
It's a very good read and, although there is obscenities in it, it's a wonderful read that makes you feel as if you are there with him. You feel his wonder, joy, and pain. I recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of ice climbing, if you ice climb yourself, or you just like reading adventure books. This one certainly qualifies.

Next up:
Pompeii by Robert Harris
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Faith of Our Fathers by N.C. Allen
Hiroshima by John Hersey
A Fresh Start in Fairhaven by Sharon Downing Jarvis
And more to come! I have a due date for most of these...