Joe Simpson's Survival
How did Joe Simpson escape the crevasse?
4.4 (31)
48 mins
Follow Joe Simpson's catastrophic fall during an expedition in the Peruvian Andes, where a broken leg left him hanging inside a deep crevasse. Discover the decisions that followed as his climbing partner was forced to make an impossible choice.
Ep 1:
Two Mountains, One Haunting Rope
A boy's obsession with a dead climber's story sets the stage for his own brush with death, as two men on two mountains, decades apart, face the same unanswerable question: why does one live and one doesn't?
Ep 2:
The Traverse That Could Not Be Uncrossed
On the Eiger, a brilliant traverse unlocks the North Face but seals its climbers' fate, while in Peru, Joe Simpson shatters his leg and Simon Yates commits to an agonizing, perhaps impossible, rescue.
Ep 3:
A Knife, a Crevasse, and a Choice
Trapped and freezing, Tony Kurtz fights a jammed knot fifty feet from rescue, while Simon Yates, holding Joe's full weight above a crevasse, is forced into mountaineering's most controversial decision.
Ep 4:
Crawling Out of the Dark
Alone in a crevasse with a severed rope, Joe Simpson must choose between dying quickly or crawling toward a sliver of impossible hope across miles of broken glacier.
Discussions (5)
Hal
Level 3 · 9 hours agoI disagree that Siula Grande's West Face was considered virtually impossible. There were previous attempts before Simpson and Yates. Calling it the first ascent of the West Face is accurate but framing it as untouched is a stretch.
Oliver
Level 9 · 9 hours agoJoe saying he wouldve cut the rope too and that Simon took too long is a stretch. Easy to say that from a hospital bed not hanging off a cliff.
Hudson
Level 7 · 9 hours agoJoe saying he'd have cut the rope too is easy to say from a hospital bed. You're not making that call rationally at 19,000 feet. That guilt would destroy most people.
