Against The Wall

Simon Yates is 'the one who cut the rope' in Joe Simpson's award-winning account of their epic struggle for survival in Touching the Void. Afterwards, while Simpson recuperated from multiple leg injuries, Yates continued mountaineering on the hardest routes. Perhaps the most testing of all was one of the world's largest vertical rockfaces, the 4,000-foot East Face of the Central Tower of Paine in Chile. Battered by ferocious storms, Yates and his three companions should have turned back. Instead they struggled on, living in hammocks suspended over the yawning chasm below. Their greatest difficulties, however, come not from the elements but from within themselves. Almost crippled with fear just below the summit, the disillusioned team is forced into a nightmare retreat. After resting in a nearby town, they return to complete the climb, but Yates knows he still has to face one of life's greatest challenges.
More than a story of macho bravado and nail-biting suspense, this book charts one man's attempt to resolve the inner conflicts that beset us all in every walk of life.