spandexcajun posted:

Touching the void

http://www.pbs.org/previews/touchingthevoid/

"Joe Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, had just reached the top of a 21,000-foot peak in the Andes when disaster struck. Simpson plunged off the vertical face of an ice ledge, breaking his leg. In the hours that followed, darkness fell and a blizzard raged as Yates tried to lower his friend to safety. Finally, Yates was forced to cut the rope, moments before he would have been pulled to his own death.

The next three days were an impossibly grueling ordeal for both men. Yates, certain that Simpson was dead, returned to base camp consumed with grief and guilt over abandoning him. Miraculously, Simpson had survived the fall, but crippled, starving, and severely frostbitten was trapped in a deep crevasse. Summoning vast reserves of physical and spiritual strength, Simpson crawled over the cliffs and canyons of the Andes, reaching base camp hours before Yates had planned to leave."

This was originally a book made into a "Docu-drama" years after the event. It is an amazing story of perseverance, makes you feel like you could get though anything after watching it.

It's like the anti-"rich white guys pay Sherpas to carry them up Everest" mountain climbing story.

Please ignore the cheesy "Hollywood" style of this trailer, the whole film is quite well done and available on Youtube.