Touching The Void Page #3

Already the clouds were coming

in from the east. Big clouds.

We expected this ridge to

be quite straightforward,

quite an easy way to descend.

We were hoping, we would

be able to sort of walk.

And it turned out to be very difficult.

It was horrendous.

Vertical on the west side, with the

cornices overhanging the west side,

and on the east side steep

fleetings running down 100m below us.

It was a shock. And

it was quite dangerous.

It all got a bit out of

control. That stage of things.

Half an hour to an hour after

leaving the summit, we were lost.

We were in the wild now,

we couldn't see anything.

Then we got like a little break

in the clouds and I saw the ridge,

so I started climbing back up to it.

I didn't know it was the side

of the ridge I was on, but

it was actually an enormous

cornice, an overhang of snow and ice,

and I was walking up over the top of it.

I was left hanging, looking

down, as all this snow and ice

then fell away from me, down the

west side of the Siula Grande.

I got back up on the ridge

and shouted then to Joe

that I'd found the

ridge, like that, I said,

"I found the ridge, Joe!"

We'd hoped to go down that day,

but by the time it got dark,

we were still very high.

Still at 6000m.

And that night, as we made

a brew, the gas ran out.

It was pretty obvious

the following morning

that we descended the

worst part of the ridge.

And I was pretty confident that we'd

get back down to the base camp that day.

I thought at that stage it was pretty

much in the bag I suppose, the whole climb.

I was ahead of Simon,

and suddenly there was this

vertical wall, bisecting the ridge.

I then get on my hands and knees, and

hammer both my axes into the ice at the top

and then lower myself off the ice cliff.

When you hammer the axe in, you listen

to the sound it makes. And you look at it.

Now I was hanging with both axes,

right. I took the hammer out, and

what I wanted to do is now

place it in the vertical wall.

And I swung, and the pick

went in, and it just made a...

just a strange sound.

And I thought, "Well, I'll take

it out, make a good placement."

So I just wanted to put bona... dead

solid axe placements in. All the way down.

And I was about to

swing at the ice again

The pain is... came

flooding down my thigh

and my knee was very, very very painful

The impact drove my lower leg

straight through my knee joint.

As the bone went into my tibia it

split the tibial plateau straight off

and carried on up.

Quite wild, the pain now. I

couldn't cope with it at first.

I just breathed on and it started to

go and I can remember looking across

to the west and seeing that we

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