I reread Simpson’s ‘A Game of Ghosts’.

The penultimate chapter recounts a fall in Nepal. Sliding on ice while his partner is falling on the other end of the rope, Simpson gouges his eye socket and tears his nostril from his top lip with his ice axe. He also breaks his ankle.

I thought Touching the Void was hardcore.

Has he MTFDown since then?

😯

Do you think there is a queue to be his climbing partner?

i’ve read a few of his books, i’ve found them entertaining and good ‘finking fodder’.

from my comfy armchair it does seem that he’s made a career out of not being very good at mountaineering – and writing about falling off.

(i suspect that he’s actually very good at mountaineering, to the point where he’s drawn to the difficult/dangerous stuff – hence his incidents)

from my comfy armchair it does seem that he’s made a career out of not being very good at mountaineering – and writing about falling off.

This^^

I’d rather have Simon Yates on the other end of any rope I was attached to.

I love his books.

However, he CAN be a very, very difficult and driven individual to deal with. Or so I have heard.

Guess he has to be a bit of a selfish knob to do what he does.

Known as the ‘crevace ****’ by certain teenagers made to read Touching the Void for GCSE English…he gave as good as he got on Twitter!

maybe climbing isn’t for him

read most of his books, fascinating insight into their mindsets and he has strong opinions on Everest.

One of them is essentially an autobiography of his early years, and I remember it seemed to be a list of all the climbers who camped on the pitch next to him through a summer not coming back alive. Sobering stuff, or he’s cursed….

I went to a screening of “Touching The Void” where he gave a short talk afterwards on his life in the mountains, he was very captivating and supremely adept at holding your attention but i can understand where Rusty Spanner is coming from with the criticism above, there were a few supposedly “pro” mountaineers in the auditorium who attempted to raise issues with his methods, style and outcomes etc, whereas he shot them them down with a few very curt words and he carries the sort of self assured demeanour that your average joe will never possess – amazingly confidant persona which i guess you need to be if you do that kind of sport.

Fair play to him, balls of steel.

I don’t climb or have any inclination to do so but I’ve loved all of his books that I’ve read. Some people are just wired a bit differently when it comes to how they get a thrill from life.

I went to a talk by Simon Yates once. He was very critical of their climbing in the early days.

Whilst I’m not a great fan of the way he comes across he’s had a fair few epics in his time.

For further reading I’d heavily recommend ‘Learning to Breathe’ by Andy Cave ‘Psychovertical’ by Andy Kirkpatrick.

He’s not easy going. But have you met Ran Feinnes!?. Like Joes books though.

He does wine on a lot about ethics in climbing. I like Touching the void, but after a couple more of his books, he seemed to become like a stuck record, just going on and on about people being more interested in climbing than rescuing random strangers.

Any other suggestions for further reading?

The Will to Climb, Obsession and Commitment & the Quest to Climb Annapuna is a good read

“mountain of the mind” is a good, if slightly wandering investigation into how humans ideas of mountains have, in a few hundred years changed from them being accursed places to be avoided at all costs, to being wondrous, alluring places that people can value higher than life and relationships.

Andy Kirkpatrick is a brilliant read. Cold Wars is genuinely hilarious, wife got a bit annoyed by me guffawing the whole way through, she was into something a bit more serious at the time. He’s got a great sense of black humour about the ridiculousness of the situations he puts himself in. And very insightful and moving as well. Brilliant to see talking, too.

Edit: Cold Wars won the Boardman Tasker prize this year. Good on him. Not bad for someone profoundly dyslexic who put a huge amount of effort into learning how to write!

‘the white spider’ by Heinrich Harrer is an absolute classic about the north face of the Eiger.
‘into thin air’ by Jon Krakauer, about the Everest disaster.
‘the thin white line’ again by Andy Cave (coal miner come mountaineer turned English literature post-grad)
And last but not certainly not least, one book to rule them all….
‘the ascent of rum doodle’ by W E Bowman, concerning the ascent of the only mountain higher than Everest by an outstanding British team fuelled only by champagne, and supported only by tens of Sherpas, in turn supported by youths, in turn supported by boys. A truly epic expedition that only a stiff British upper lip could conquer.

Ended up having breakfast sat opposite Joe Simpson in a Tignes ski-hostel a couple of years back. I hadn’t twigged who it was, so thought nothing of his comment on his previous days skiing “being the toughest day of his life”. Clearly not even slightly true 🙂

In to thin air is very good.

Tom Pateys book “One Mans Mountains” is very good as is Everest the Unclimbed Ridge by Andy Greig

I thought Mountain of the Mind was a colossal pile of ****. I’ll never get that time back…

Paul Pritchard’s Totem Pole is a pretty impressive. Rock, rather than mountains though.

In to thin air is very good.

Having read some of his other books and been impressed, I thought that one was a pretty poor bit of writing when it came to objective judgements. The storm of argument which resulted from it never really satisfied anyone

‘I Chose To Climb’ – Chris Bonnigton

‘The Hard Way’ – Joe Brown

‘The Villain’ – Don Whillans

Oh, and ‘Living Dangerously’ – Ranaulph Fiennes

Everest the Hard Way – Bonnington
All books by Boardman and Tasker (there is a hardback compendium which is ace)
View from the Summit – Edmund Hilary biog
Summit Fever – Greig

That’s what I can see from my sofa…there are more but it’s dark and I’m not moving!

Thanks guys, that’s my Christmas wish list sorted. Read a few, some new.

The Villain – Biography of Don Whillans by Jim Perrin.
If you like your heroes flawed but bloody tough, it’s a cracker:

This is fantastic:

Anything by Dougal Haston is good – In High Places in particular.

The Hard Years by Joe Brown is worth a read.

Anything by Bill Tilman and/or Eric Shipton. Nanda Devi, Blank on the Map. Epic.

He was a guest speaker at a conference I was working on 10 years or so ago. I and 99% of the audience had no idea who he was but for 90 minutes he had a totally captivated audience. Speaking to him before and afterwards he didn’t come across as someone comfortable just chatting but he sure knows how to tell a story.

Feeding the Rat by Al Alvarez is well worth a read.

I climbed and spent a bit of time with Joe, just after Touching the Void was published, he’s a nice guy.

Second The Villain as a cracking read.

Ha yes Don.. it is told that it took 5 police men to arrest him.
4 to hold him down and 1 to hit him…
But this may just be part of the legend.:D

If you’re ever in Hebden Bridge, go and get your hair cut by John, the bloke who cuts hair (and paints mangnificent portraits and seascapes in oils) in his Barbers above the Toy Shop at Innovations.
Old drinking pal of Don’s:

Won’t spoil the stories, but there are quite a few and they’re all good. 😀

There’s also Annapurna by Maurice Herzog, An 8000m peak unmapped at the time, explored recconoitred and climbed in one expedition without oxygen, and that was the easy part 🙂

Just read Andy Kirkpatrick’s ‘Psycho Vertical’, brilliant! Read all Joe Simpson books a few years ago when I did a bit of climbing.

A timely plug for the Herzog book above. His daughter says he never climbed it BTW.

I enjoyed Jean-Marc Boivin’s “l’Abominable Homme des Glaces”

Edukator, have you read La Trace de l’Ange? Biography of Marco Siffredi, followed in the footsteps of Boivin.

Great read.

http://www.vilains.com/chroniquedetail.php?chronique_id=54

Have a huge respect for Joe’s achievement’s as a mountaineer. He also has some insightful comments about climbing and mountaineering especially stuff about Sherpas and the impact mountaineers have.

There are some interesting opinions on other subjects which are controversial and I dont agree with.

Takes all sorts. Live and live live eh

PS An up-to-date read would be Nick Bullock’s ‘Echoes’. In the same vein as Andy Cave’s book.

Recommend his Twitter feed too for those who bother with it.