1985 Simpson-Yates Siula Grande West Face & Touching the Void Expedition

United Kingdom🏔️ 1 Peak

Joe Simpson

Born on August 13, 1960, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to a British Army officer, Joe Simpson was educated in England and discovered rock climbing at Ampleforth College. By his early twenties, Simpson had established himself as a dedicated alpine-style mountaineer, tackling difficult classic routes across the European Alps, including the Dru and the Eiger North Face. In May 1985, Simpson and his climbing partner Simon Yates traveled to the remote Cordillera Huayhuash in Peru to attempt the unclimbed 1,000-metre West Face of Siula Grande (6,344 m). Climbing in pure, lightweight alpine style without fixed ropes, the pair successfully reached the summit on June 8, 1985. During the descent along the precarious North Ridge in a raging blizzard, Simpson slipped down an ice cliff and shattered his right tibial plateau into the knee joint. In an extraordinary display of partnership, Yates lowered Simpson down 3,000 feet of storm-blasted slopes using two knotted 150-foot ropes, until Simpson inadvertently slid over an unseen overhang, hanging suspended in free space above a colossal crevasse. Unable to hear Simpson's shouts and being pulled from his precarious snow belay, Yates made the agonizing decision to cut the rope. Miraculously, Simpson survived the 150-foot fall onto a snow bridge inside the crevasse. Over the next three and a half days, without food or water and suffering agonizing pain, Simpson crawled, hopped, and slid across five miles of crevassed glacier and boulder moraines, reaching their base camp tents just hours before Yates planned to depart. Simpson documented this triumph of the human spirit in his 1988 masterpiece Touching the Void, which won the Boardman Tasker Prize and was adapted into an award-winning feature documentary. Despite multiple surgeries, Simpson returned to mountaineering, climbing in the Himalayas, Andes, and Karakoram, and authoring several acclaimed books exploring danger, fear, and human resilience.

United Kingdom🏔️ 1 Peak

Simon Yates

Born in 1963 in Croft, Leicestershire, Simon Yates developed an early passion for technical rock climbing and alpine mountaineering. Known for his methodical temperament, exceptional physical endurance, and calm composure under extreme stress, Yates quickly established himself among the leading British alpinists of the 1980s. In 1985, at the age of 21, Yates joined 25-year-old Joe Simpson for an ambitious two-man lightweight expedition to the Cordillera Huayhuash in Peru. Their goal was the unclimbed 1,000-metre West Face of Siula Grande (6,344 m). In three grueling days of technical ice and mixed climbing, they conquered the vertical face to claim the first ascent. During the treacherous descent in storm conditions, Simpson fell and sustained a crippling fracture to his right leg. In a display of heroic devotion, Yates engineered a system of lowering his partner down 3,000 feet of blizzard-swept slopes in darkness, until Simpson slipped over a hidden serac lip and dangled freely above a yawning crevasse. Unable to communicate or see his partner, and gradually being pulled off his unanchored snow seat, Yates held the load for over an hour before using an alpine knife to sever the taut rope, saving his own life. Believing Simpson dead, Yates descended to base camp in grief, only to be reunited with his frostbitten partner four days later when Simpson crawled back to camp. Despite sensationalized media controversy, Simpson vigorously defended Yates' action as entirely rational and life-saving. Yates continued an extraordinary mountaineering career, completing the first ascent of the Central Buttress of Leyla Peak in the Karakoram, first ascents in the Cordillera Darwin in Chile, and exploratory expeditions across Greenland, Antarctica, and Central Asia.