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‘THE LONG CRAWL’
(extract Sun-Herald
31-5-03)
Extract from
"Touching the Void", Joe Simpson, 1988 (Random House Australia), $24.95.
Simpson's ascent of Siula
Grande (the peak on the left" nearly ended in tragedy. (Picture: Mark
Horell)
Fifty years ago last Thursday Edmund Hillary and
Tenzing Norgay stood on the summit of Mt Everest. But while their story is
one of grit and determination, it is not the greatest mountaineering story
ever told: That honour belongs to Joe Simpson's astonishing tale of crawling
broken from a Peruvian crevasse after being cut free and left to die by his
climbing partner.
Joe Simpson and his climbing partner Simon
Yates bad reached the summit of Siula Grande, in the remote Cordillera
Huayhuash region of the Peruvian Andes, in May 1985, when their descent
became a nightmare. The pair were descending an ice cliff, using ice axe and
crampons, _when the edge gave way and Simpson plummeted nearly 11m.
I hit the slope at the base of the cliff before :I
saw it coming. I was facing into the slope and both knees locked as I struck
it. I felt a shattering blow in my knee, felt bones splitting, and screamed.
The impact catapulted me over backwards and down the slope of the East Face.
I slid, head-first, on my back. The rushing speed of it confused me. I
thought of the drop below, but felt nothing. Simon would be ripped off the
mountain, He couldn't hold this. I screamed again as - I jerked to a sudden
violent stop.
Everything was still, silent. My thoughts raced madly.
Then pain flooded.- down my thigh - a fierce burning fire coming down the
inside of my thigh, seeming to ball in my groin, building and building until
I cried out at it, and my breathing came in ragged gasps. "My leg! Oh Jesus.
My leg!"
I hung, head down, on my back, left :leg tangled in
the rope above me and my right leg hanging slackly to one side. I lifted my
head from the snow and stared, up across my chest, - at a grotesque
distortion in the right knee, twisting the leg into a strange zigzag.
A wave of nausea surged over me. I pressed my face
into the snow, and the sharp cold seemed to calm me. Something terrible,
something dark with dread occurred to me, and as I thought about it I felt
the dark thought break into panic: "I've broken my leg, that's it. I'm dead.
Everyone said it ... if there's just two of you a broken ankle could be a
death sentence ... if it's broken . . ."
I kicked my right leg against the slope. My knee
exploded. Bone grated, and the fireball rushed from groin to' knee. I
screamed. I looked down at the knee and could see it was broken, yet I tried
not to believe what I was seeing. It wasn't just broken, it was ruptured,
twisted, crushed, and I could see the kink in the joint and knew what had
happened. The impact had driven my lower leg up through the knee joint.
With a groan, I squeezed my eyes tight shut. Hot tears
`filled my eyes and my contact lenses swam in them. I squeezed tight again
and felt hot drops rolling over my face. It wasn't the pain, I felt sorry
for myself, childishly so, and with that thought I couldn't help the tears.
Dying had seemed so far away. Now everything was tinged with it.
Yates, arriving at the top of the cliff, sees his
friend crumpled at the bottom.
"WHAT happened? Are you OK?"
I looked up in surprise. I hadn't heard Simon's
approach. He stood at the top of the cliff looking down at me, puzzled. I
made an effort to talk normally, as if nothing had happened:
"I fell. The edge gave way." I paused, then I said as
unemotionally as I could: "I've broken my leg."
Ignoring the unspoken - and most obvious-solution,
Yates decided to lower Simpson, length by length, to terra firma.
It was a strategy that might kill them both.
I looked down to the col. It was about 180m below us
and slightly to the right. Without thinking, I began to work out possible
ways of getting to it. To descend directly to the col would be very
difficult since it meant a diagonal descent crossing the angle of the slope.
It would have to be straight down and then horizontally across to the col.
The traverse appeared shorter than the slope I'd just crossed.
"Do you think you can hold my weight in this snow?" I
asked.
We had no snow stakes left. If Simon took my weight on
the rope, he would have to do so standing on the loose open slope with no
anchors.
"If we dig a big bucket seat l should be able to hold
you. If it starts to collapse I can always shout, and you can take your
weight off."
"OK. It would be quicker if you lowered me on two ropes
tied together."
He nodded in agreement. Already he had begun
to dig out his belay seat. I grabbed the two ropes, knotted them together
and tied myself into the free end. The other end was already attached to
Simon's harness. In effect we were now, roped together with one 90m line,
which would halve the time spent digging seats and double the distance
lowered.
Simon could control the speed of my descent by
using a belay plate, and so reduce any sudden jerks of weight and avoid
having the rope run away from him if he couldn't get a grip on it with his
frozen mitts.
The one, problem was the knot joining the two ropes.
The only way to get it past the belay plate would be by disconnecting the
rope from the plate and then reconnecting it with the other knot.
This would be possible only if I stood up and took my
weight off the rope. 1 thanked my stars that I hadn't broken both legs.
‘OK. You ready?’
Simon was seated in the deep hole he had dug in the
slope, with his legs braced hard into the snow. He held the belay plate
locked off with the rope taut between us.
I lay on my chest immediately beneath Simon, and edged
down until all my weight was on the rope. Initially, I couldn't commit
myself to letting my feet hang free of the snow. If the seat crumbled
straight away we would be falling instantaneously. Simon nodded at me and
grinned. Encouraged by his confidence I lifted my feet and began to slide
down. It worked!
He let the rope out smoothly in a steady descent. I
lay against the snow holding an axe in each hand ready to dig them in the
moment I felt a fall begin. Occasionally the crampons on my right boot
snagged in the snow and jarred my leg. I tried not to cry out but failed. I
didn't want Simon to stop.
In a surprisingly short time he did stop. I looked up
and saw that he had receded far from me, and I could make out only his head
and shoulders leaning out from the seat in the snow. He shouted something
but I couldn't make it out until three sharp tugs explained it. After the
endless time traversing the rise I was astounded at the speed at which I had
descended 45m.
Astounded and pleased as punch, I wanted to giggle. My
mood had swung from despair to wild optimism, and death rushed back to being
a vague possibility rather than the inevitable fact.
The rope went slack as I hopped up on to my good leg.
I was acutely aware that while Simon was changing the knot over we were at
our most vulnerable. If I fell, I would drop a whole rope's length before it
came tight on to him, and he would be whipped off the mountain by the
impact.
I dug my axes in and stayed motionless. I could see
the col below and to my right, already a lot closer. More tugs on the rope
and I carefully leant my body down the slope as the second lower began.
As the pair
continued the painstaking process of lowering,
the weather started to deteriorate, and in the murk, they didn't see an ice
cliff looming.
Soon after I lost sight of Simon I noticed the slope
steepening again.
I slid faster, and snagged my foot more frequently. I
was distracted by the pain and discomfort, and thought no more of the slope.
I struggled vainly to clear my foot from the snow before giving up and
accepting the torment.
The sense of weight on my harness increased, as did
the speed. I tried braking with my arms, but to no effect.
I yelled for Simon to slow down. The speed increased,
and my heart jumped wildly. Had he lost control? I tried braking again.
Nothing.
I stifled the panic and tried to think clearly - no,
he hadn't lost control. I'm going down fast , but it’s steady. He’s trying
to be quick, that's all. I knew it to be true, but there was something
wrong.
It was the slope. Of course! I should have thought of
it earlier. It was now much steeper, and that could mean only one thing - I
was approaching another drop. I screamed out a frantic warning, but he
couldn't hear me. I shouted again, as loud as I could, but the words were
whipped away into the snow clouds.
A sense of great danger washed over me. I had to stop.
I realised Simon would hear nothing, so I must stop myself. If he felt my
weight come off the rope he would know there must be a good reason. I
grabbed my ice axe and tried to brake my descent. I leant heavily over the
axe head, burying it in the slope, but it wouldn't bite.
Then abruptly my feet were in space. I had time to cry
out, and claw hopelessly at the snow before my whole body swung off an edge.
I jerked on to the rope and toppled over backwards, spinning in circles from
my harness. The rope ran up to a lip of ice and I saw that I was still
descending. The sight vanished as a heavy avalanche of powder poured over
me.
When it ceased I realised I had stopped moving. Simon
had managed to hold the impact of my body coming on to the rope. I didn't
understand what had happened, except that I was hanging in space.
Looking between my legs, I could see the wall dropping
below, angled away from me. It was overhanging all the way to the bottom. I
stared down trying to judge the height of the wall. I thought I could see
the snow-covered base of the wall with the dark outline of a crevasse
directly beneath me, then snow flurries blocked my view. I looked back at
the edge above.
There was no chance of Simon hauling me up. It would
have been extremely hard with a solid belay. Sitting in the snow seat, it
would be suicidal to attempt it. I shouted at the darkness above and heard
an unintelligible muffled yell. I couldn't be sure whether it had been Simon
or an echo of my own shout.
I waited silently, hugging the rope with my arms to
stay upright, and feeling shocked as I stared between my legs at the drop.
Gradually, and with a sense of mounting dread, I began to get some
perspective into what I was looking at. I was an awfully long way above the
crevasse at the base of the cliff, and as it slowly dawned on me I felt my
stomach lurch with fear. There was at least 30m of air below my feet!
I swung round and stared at the wall. It was nearly 2m
from me. At full arm's reach, I still couldn't. reach the ice with my axe. I
tried swinging towards the wall but ended up spinning helplessly. I knew
that I had to get back up the rope, and I had to do it quickly: Simon had no
idea that I'd gone over.
The other steep drops were short walls. He had no
reason to assume this would be any different. In that case he might lower
me. Oh, Jesus, I'll jam on the half-way knot long before I get to the
bottom!
For 20 minutes Simpson hung, freezing, in the
crevasse, trying to tie a system of pulleys he could haul himself up on, but
with his hands frozen into uselessness, he gave up. He knew Yates couldn't
belay him up, and the knotted rope meant he couldn't go down. Then, a series
of jolts alerted him to the terrible truth, his weight was pulling Yates off
the mountain.
His friend had no choice but to cut him free.
I knew he was in the same situation as me, unable to
move. Either he would die in his seat or be pulled from it by the constant
strain of my body.
I wondered whether I would die before this happened. It
would happen as soon as he lost consciousness, and maybe he would do so
before me. On the rope I was clear of the worst avalanches. He would be
colder than me.
Each thought of death, of mine or his, came quite
unemotionally - matter-of-fact. I was too tired to care.
The rope slipped. I bounced down a few centimetres.
Then again. Had he freed the knot? I slipped again. Stopped. Then I knew
what was about to happen. He was coming down. I was pulling him off. I hung
still, and waited for it to happen. Any minute, any minute ...
Then, what I had waited for pounced on me. The stars
went out, and I fell. Like something come alive, the rope lashed violently
against my face and I fell silently, endlessly into nothingness, as if
dreaming of falling. I fell fast, faster than thought, and my stomach
protested at the swooping speed of it. I swept down, and from far above I
saw myself falling and felt nothing.
Incredibly, Simpson survived, landing on a snow
bridge padded with powdery snow before descending to the floor of the
crevasse.
I looked round the enclosed vault of snow and ice,
familiarising myself with its shape and size. The walls opposite closed in,
but didn't meet. A narrow gap had been filled with snow from above to form a
cone which rose all the way to the roof. It was about 4.5m wide at the base
and as little as 1-1.5m across at the top.
A pillar of gold light beamed diagonally from a small
hole in the roof, sprang bright reflections off the far wall of the
crevasse. I was mesmerised by this beam of sunlight burning through the
vaulted ceiling from the real world outside. I was going- to reach that
sunbeam. I knew it then with absolute certainty. How I would do it, and when
I would reach it were not considered. I just knew.
I examined the surface cautiously. The snow looked
powdery and I was immediately suspicious of it. I looked along the edge
where the floor joined the walls and soon found what I was looking for.
In several places there were dark gaps between the ice
walls and the snow. It was not a floor so much as a suspended ceiling across
the crevasse dividing the abyss below from this upper chamber.
The start of the snow slope running up to the sunshine
lay over 12m from me. The inviting snow-carpet between me and the slope
tempted me to run across it. The idea made me chuckle. I had forgotten that
my right leg was useless. OK. Crawl across it ... but which way? Straight
across, or keeping near to the back wall?
It was a difficult decision. I was less worried about
putting my foot through the floor than by the damage a fall would do to the
fragile surface.
I glanced nervously at the beam of sunlight, trying to
draw strength from it, and made my mind up at once. I would cross in the
middle. It was the shortest distance and there was nothing to suggest that
it would be riskier than at the sides.
I gently lowered myself until I was sitting on the
snow but with most of my weight still on the rope. It was agonising to inch
the rope out and let my weight down gradually. I found myself holding my
breath, every muscle in my body tensed. I became acutely aware of the
slightest movement in the snow, and I wondered whether I would end up
sinking slowly through the floor.
Then some of the tension in the rope relaxed, and I
realised that the floor was holding. I breathed deeply, and released my
aching hand from the rope.
I let out about 12m of rope and tied the remaining 9m
to my harness. Then, lying spreadeagled on my stomach, I began to wiggle
towards the snow cone, anxiety easing as I got closer to the other side.
An occasional muffled thumping told me that snow had
fallen away into the drop beneath the floor. I would freeze rigidly at the
slightest sound, holding my breath and feeling my heart hammering before
moving off again. The black holes in the floor were all behind me when I
passed the halfway point and I sensed I was now on thicker, stronger snow.
I stood up gingerly on my left leg letting my damaged
limb hang uselessly above the snow. It now hung shorter than my good leg. At
first I wasn't sure how to set about climbing the slope, which I guessed to
be about 40m high -10 minutes' work with two legs.
It was the angle of the slope that worried me. To
begin with, it. rose at an angle of only 45 degrees, and I felt confident
that I could drag myself up that, but as it gained height so the angle
increased.
The top 6m looked almost vertical, but I knew that my
eyes were being confused by looking straight on to the slope. I decided it
could be no more than 65 degrees at the top.
The thought wasn't encouraging: loose powder would be
exhausting enough without the injury. I suppressed a growing pessimism by
telling myself that I was lucky to have found a slope at all.
Simpson experimented to find a method most likely
to get him to the top alive.
Patterns! I remembered how I had traversed to the col
with Simon. It seemed so long ago. That's the way. Find a routine and stick
to it. I was resting on my axes looking at my good leg buried in the snow. I
tried lifting the injured leg up parallel with it and groaned as the knee
crunched and refused to bend properly, leaving the boot about 15cm lower
than the good foot. Pain flared up as I leant down and dug a step in the
snow.
I tamped it down as much as possible, then dug another
smaller step below it. When I had finished I planted both axes in the slope
above, gritted my teeth, and heaved my burning leg up until the boot rested
in the lower step.
Bracing myself on the axes, I made a convulsive hop
off my good leg, pressing my arms hard down for extra thrust. A searing pain
burst from my knee as my weight momentarily came on to it, and then faded as
the good leg found a foothold on the higher step.
I shouted an obscenity which echoed comically round
the chamber. Then I bent down to dig another two steps and repeat the
pattern. Bend, hop, rest...
The flares of pain became merged into the routine and I
paid less attention to them, concentrating solely on the patterns. I was
sweating profusely despite the cold. Agony and exertion blended into one,
and time passed unnoticed as I became absorbed with the patterns of hopping
and digging. I resisted the urge to look up or down. I knew that I was
making desperately slow progress and I didn't want to be reminded of it by
seeing the sunbeam still far above me.
After 2 ½ hours the slope had steepened considerably,
and I had to be especially careful when I hopped.
There was a critical moment when all my weight was on
the axes driven into the loose snow, and the angle forced me to balance my
movements precisely. I had nearly fallen on two occasions. One hop had
missed the good step and I had slithered into the smaller step below, with
my knee twisting beneath my weight.
I had struggled to remain standing, fighting off the
nausea and faintness. The second time I had hopped successfully but too
explosively and had lost balance. Again I felt things move and grind in my
knee as I swung violently forward into the snow to stop the fall.
It was odd to curse and sob and hear the sounds
repeated in the chamber below. Even more peculiar was the feeling of acute
embarrassment at complaining like that. There was no one to hear, but the
looming empty chamber behind me made me feel inhibited, as if it were some
disapproving silent witness.
I rested with my head on the snow. I was soaked in
sweat but it cooled quickly when I stopped. Soon I was shivering. I glanced
at the roof above and was delighted the sun was nearly touching me.
It took another 2 ½ to reach a point 3m below the hole
in the roof. The angle of the snow had become almost impossibly difficult,
and every hop had to be a measured gamble against losing balance and making
the step.
Fortunately the snow conditions improved as the cone
narrowed and I found I could get a solid axe placement in the ice wall to my
left. I felt exhausted despite the approaching roof. The pain reached a
level and then stayed constant. No amount of care could prevent the
temporary weight I had to place on my knee, and I felt weak and sickened by
the repeated twisted crunching spasms in the fracture site.
I bent into the slope again and hopped, pulling up
powerfully on the axe I had placed in the wall, and got my boot into the
step without hurting the bad knee. The snow roof brushed my helmet. I was
directly beneath the small, head-sized hole in the snow.
The glare from the sun was blinding, and when I looked
down, the chamber had disappeared into inky darkness.
If anyone had seen me emerge from the crevasse they
would have laughed. My head popped up through the snow roof and I stared
gopher-like at the scene outside.
Hopping, crawling and dragging his broken body
behind him, Simpson made it out of the mountains. All that was left was to
traverse the boulder-strewn approach to base camp, where he hoped against
hope Yates and their friend Richard remained.
I pulled my sack on to my back and picked my ice axe
from the snow. The moraines tumbled away from me in a wide torrent of
boulders. I knew that they were very large in the upper reaches of the
moraine flow and gradually diminished to rock and scree near the lakes.
There was no question of crawling. Walking was also out, so it would have to
be hopping.
At the first attempt I fell flat on my face, cracking
my forehead sharply on the edge of a boulder, and twisting my knee viciously
under me. I screamed. When the pain ebbed, I tried again. I held the axe in
my right hand. At less than 60cm in length it made a poor walking stick, and
I was hunched over like an arthritic pensioner as I placed it carefully on
the ground. With all my weight on the axe, I hefted the useless right leg
forward so that it hung parallel with my left leg. Bracing myself on the axe
I made a violent hop forward.
It was too violent, and I swayed precariously, trying
to stop myself toppling on to my face again. I had made all of 15cm forward
progress! I tried again and fell heavily. The pain took longer to settle,
and when I stood again I could feel my knee burning hot.
After covering about 9m I had managed to perfect my
hobbling technique. It wasn't very efficient, and I was sweating profusely
from the effort. I had worked out it was best not to place the leg in front
of my good foot, and, rather than making a violent hop, I could execute a
swinging step and keep my balance.
In those first 9m I fell at every other hop, but at
the end I could hop twice as far and still stay upright.
I broke the hopping down into distinct actions and
then repeated them faithfully. Place the axe, lift the foot forward, brace,
hop, place the axe, lift-brace-hop ...
I had started down the moraines at one o'clock ... 5 ½
to go before dark. Place- lift-brace-hop. I needed water. Place-lift ... and
on until I could hobble automatically and switch off.
The falls brought me back each time, but they were
unavoidable. My axe shaft would slip on a loose rock and send me tumbling
halfway through a hop, or I would land on some scree and fall sideways into
the boulders. I tried to protect my knee but it was no use.
I had no strength in my leg with which to pull it
safely to one side. Invariably I fell fully on to it, or bashed it cruelly
against the rocky floor. The flares of agony at each impact never diminished
but, for some reason, my recovery rate improved dramatically. I stopped
screaming when I fell and found that it. made no difference. Screaming was
for others to hear, and the moraines cared little for my protests. Sometimes
I cried, childlike, at the pain and frustration, more often I retched.
I was never sick. There was nothing to vomit. Two
hours later, I turned and looked at where I had come from. The glacier was a
distant dirty white cliff. My spirits rose at this tangible proof of
descent.
"Joe! Is that you? JOE!"
Simon's voice sounded cracked with strain. I shouted a
reply but nothing came out. I was sobbing convulsively, retching from the
spasmodic heavings in my chest.
Incoherent words were mumbled into the dark. I turned
my head to see a bobbing light approaching in a rush. There was a sound of
stones rasping underfoot.
Then the light flared over me and all I could see was
the dazzle of its beam.
"Help me . . . please help."
I felt strong arms reach round my shoulders, pulling
me. Simon's face became abruptly visible.
"Joe! God! Oh my God! F...ing hell, f. . ., look at
you. S. . ., Richard, hold him. Lift him, lift him you stupid bastard! God
Joe, how? How?. . ."
Too shocked to realise what he was saying, his words
tumbled out in an obscene litany, expletives said for no reason, a
meaningless stream of obscenities.
"Dying . . . couldn't take any more. Too much for me .
. . too much . . . thought it was over . . . please help, for God's sake
help me . . ."
"It'll be OK. I've got you, I have you; you're safe .
. ."
Then Simon was hauling me up with his arms round my
chest, dragging me, heels bumping over the rocks.
Dropped heavily by the doorway of the tent in a soft
glow of candlelight from within, I looked up to see Richard staring down at
me, wide-eyed with apprehension. I wanted to giggle at the fuss, but tears
kept crawling from my eyes and I could speak no words.
Then Simon dragged me into the tent and laid me gently
back against a mass of warm down sleeping bags. He knelt by my side staring
at me, and I could see a confusion of pity, and horror, and alarm fighting
in his eyes. l smiled at him, and he grinned back, shaking his head slowly
from side to side.
"Thanks, Simon," I said. "You did right." I saw him
turn quickly away, averting his eyes. "Anyway, thanks."
He nodded silently.
Extract from "Touching the Void", Joe Simpson, 1988
(Random House Australia), $24.95.
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