Touching The Void

Intermediate Level

Points for Understanding Answer Key

Touching the Void
Joe Simpson
1  Joe and Simon wanted to find a mountain that would be very challenging. They wanted to climb a mountain that would be difficult and dangerous, and where there were no other climbers or rescue helicopters. Siula Grande is in the Peruvian Andes which are very remote. They wanted to climb up the WestFace because nobody had succeeded in climbing Siula Grande by the West Face before. Richard was a traveller whom Joe and Simon had met in a hotel in Lima. They asked him to come with them because they wanted someone to look after their tents and equipment during the days that they were climbing Siula Grande. The weather was worrying Joe. He was worried that a snowfall high up on the mountain couldturn into a serious storm which would cause an avalanche. He was worried about something going wrong which would cause their death. Simon was less anxious than Joe, but he understood Joe’s fears. The crevasses on the glacier were very dangerous because their openings were sometimes covered with snow. A climber could step onto this snow and fall through it into the deep crevasse underneath. A climberand his partner make a team, who take it in turns to lead and follow. The leader hammers in the axes and pulls himself up by them, and his partner follows. The climbers are tied to each other by a rope. This means that if one person gets pulled off the mountain, the other person can get pulled off too. So their lives depend on each other, and they have to trust their partner not to make anymistakes. It is essential to drink enough fluid to avoid becoming dehydrated. If you get dehydrated, you become weak and ill, and this affects your ability to climb well. Good: In the morning of the first day, Joe and Simon climbed up the ice field very successfully. They felt very good when they reached the top because it had not been very difficult. They also found a huge ball of snow which made avery good place to spend the night. Bad: In the afternoon, they were nearly hit by falling rocks. They reached the small gully later than they expected and had to climb up it in the dark. Flutings are special features of the Andes mountains. They are very dangerous because they are very steep and they are formed of soft powder snow with gullies running between them. Sometimes the gullies are closedoff at the top but often a climber cannot see if the fluting is open before he starts to climb it. So he can get trapped in the fluting as he cannot get back down it again. Joe’s feelings on reaching the summit were mixed. He felt a sense of anticlimax – a feeling that it was not as exciting as he had thought. He also thought about the future – that now they would have to find a new mountain toclimb which would be even more difficult and dangerous than Siula Grande. But he also felt proud that he and Simon had succeeded in reaching the summit. The weather changed. The North Ridge became covered in cloud and snow began to fall. Joe and Simon could not see their way and so they got lost. They did not know which side of the ridge they were on. When Simon climbed up to the ridge, he waswalking over a cornice of snow and ice which broke away and fell, so he fell with it. However, he was tied to Joe by the rope, so his fall was stopped by Joe’s weight on the other end of the rope. Climbing down the North Ridge was much more difficult than Joe and Simon had expected. It also took much longer, so that when darkness came, they were still very high up on Siula Grande. A terrible disasterhappened to Joe that day because he fell down an ice cliff and broke his leg. He was in a very remote place with no hope of rescue, and he knew that climbers who break a leg do not always survive. Touching the Void

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