Touching the Void on DVD

“I have a little trouble watching it as I react to the fact they didn't have prussiks on their ropes even though they had the cordelette in their packs.

The trailers on the DVD about how and why they made the film and what happened after are fascinating - perhaps more so than the documentary itself.”

“I'm not a technical climber gremlin so I have to ask, what are prussiks?”

“Prussiks are loops of cordelette (tied with an improved fisherman's knot) that are wound around the climbing rope. A long one that is then rolled (daisy chained) up and a shorter one further up the cord and attached to a locking carabiner on the harness.

Prussik knots can slide on the rope but lock when pulled on.

The climber can then climb up the rope by putting his foot in the long loop and catrepillarinhg up by alternately sliding and locking the prussiks.

The lead climber can use the same system to secure the rope and help the other climber.

I don't know if that's clear. Basically you always climb with this back-up system - and use it for rappeling, but people still rappel off the ends of their ropes.

I'm a little anal because I'm taking climbing instructor courses and I teach Outdoo Ed. to kids.”

“"I see," said the blind man.”

“Gremlin

In the book Joe did have prussiks but dropped them trying to tie them because his fingers were frozen. He was probably in a pretty far state of shock anyway dehydrated, broken leg, 1/2 frozen.
He got a lot warmer in the crevasse by being out of the wind, sort of like going from -40 into an igloo where it is 0 with no wind.

Also Joe was not rappeling, Simon was lowering him because Joe had a broken leg. Simon would lower him 1 rope length, wait until joe took the load off the rope, unclip and pass the knot and lower the 2nd rope. At the bottom Joe would belay himself and wait while Simon downclimbed. Repeat, they were on about the 10th lowering when Joe got air time in deteriorating weather. No voice communication because of wind noise.

I have never seen anyone preset Prussiks when being lowered.

They were racing against time to get off the steep part of the Mtn before nightfall.

Big problem was Simon just chopping a U shape snow bollard as anchor, again done for speed but they did not have a real anchor so Simon could escape the belay when Joe became non responsive.
Now Simon is just sitting with a slowly melting snow bollard between his legs, when it melts enough they both go down the hill.

The 2 questionable bits in the story are why Simon did not find Joe the next day, well solo on a glacier how close do you want to get to a crevasse, I can understand especially as he was now no water for 24hrs.
cannot understand burning Joes clothes, no excuse for that, give them to the villagers as they would be far superior to any clothing the villagers had.”

“I beg to disagree, Manuka.

I admit I thought the same as you but was corrected by my instructor while taking a rock course. We were eating lunch and I mentionned that standard procedure to-day would include pre-set prussiks as I had been taught during my crevasse rescue course - for exactly the same situation in which Simpson and Yates found themselves.

My instructor (the UIAA affiliated climbing school from which I take my courses has a hair across its arse about self and semi-self-taught climbers and have sent experts to two recent Crown Coroner's enquiries over three recent climbing deaths) shouted the French equivalent of bull#&%!$. He insisted it is standard practice since the sixties.

Well, when I got home I looked in my 1973 climbing instruction book (bought second-hand) and sure enough it shows pre-set prussiks.

Now, the book is French and it is entirely possible that the practice was standard in Europe before it became so here.

When pre-attaching them we repeat, 'waist away' to avoid crossing the loops and daisy chain the long loop and attach either to the same locking carabiner as the other loop to keep it out of the way (some instructors will give you shyte for that), or loop it to the leg loop of your harness.

When I look at the film now and think of my crevasse course and rescue techniques I wonder how they thought they could attach prussiks when they were needed when they were in their packs. It was a foolish basic error.”

“Wow, I heard you folks get off on tangents and there isn't much learning going on here... I just increased my climbing knowledge 20 fold in a few posts. :D”

“Yeah, you don't need prussiks going up because you're using protection, but going down they ought also to have had stakes. On high mountain manoeuvres, people haven't travelled roped without pro since the 70's.”

“Crossing glaciers
yes you would always pre-set prussiks so they are available if you fall through a snow bridge.

Rappeling - preset a prussik as an autoblock for the 1st one down, and use a firemans belay (pull from the bottom) for subsequent descenders.

My observation was for a climber being lowered. This is normal for top-rope climbers, injured climbers, and absolute newbies who you do not trust to Rappel. Simpson was an injured climber being lowered by Yeates.

BTW I am neither a self taught nor a semi self taught climber so please lose the condescending attitude.

As for Simpson and Yeates making an error. Simpson acknowledged in his book that he assumed that he was dead the moment he broke his leg near the top of the mountain. By attempting to lower his injured partner almost the entire mountain Yeates was putting himself at extreme risk also. They had no water, no fuel to make water because they were supposed to be off the mountain 2 days ago.
They were sacrificing a lot of safety for speed because without speed they were both dead.
Far more important than the prussiks was the lack of a solid anchor, but the time to build a proper anchor each 300ft would kill them, so they used little more than a boot belay.
Not too many people lowering an injured climber expect the climber to self rescue. The norm would be for the rescuer to escape the belay and rig a Z haul. Could not because the rescuer was 'the anchor'.

Q. Does your book show the prussiks for top-roping ? or the injured party in a rescue ? or crossing a glacier and/or rapelling.

Q. Do you have pre-set prussiks when you lead a climb? when you top rope?”

“Sorry, Manuka, the self-taught remark was not about you. I typed too quickly. I was thinking of that rock course and of when our instructor told us not to move and went over to a young couple and corrected their technique before they got themselves into trouble.

'But that's how my uncle does it.' said the girl.

I went home to take a nap before coming back for rugby practice after school and looked in the book. It was published in 1977, BTW. No, the prussiks are pre-tied when there is a possiblity of a fall requiring rescue technique. Glacier travel, obviously, but descending as well, whether by rappel or lowering.”

“I agree with you completely about tying off and using a z or even a 2:1 pulley rather than climbing up. A single stake and a prussik would have enabled Yates to do that. Hell, he could have used his pack as a deadman.

For top-roping situations with kids, the norm I learned is that three climbers per instructor is correct. Nine kids are occupied by two in line belayers per climber.

I have set up a bouldering system along the wall beside our artificial structures and the kids who aren't actively climbing can compete with each other because I have made it increasingly difficult from left to right.

We have a wooden bar along the wall above which their feet mustn't go higher than and I have marked the bar in metres. There are mattresses, of course and the kids get quite competitive.

I've never actually thought of prussiks for top-rope, but find it interesting as another skill to teach.”

“That cool Gremlin,

I have seen a climber yell to stop a professional guide Rapping off the end of his rope at the Gunks. Rope was uneven and the ends were not knotted he was within 5 ft of losing 1 end through his device. About 35ft up.

Also my daughter got into a p1ssing match with the instructor when doing her belay test at college. Instructor told her she was going overboard knotting the belay end of the rope as "the ropes were easily long enough". Daughter told him it takes 2 seconds to knot, and should always be knotted.”

“back to "The Void", they had some ice screws but I think they may have left them behind, sort of 1 at a time on the steeper sections so Yeates could get down after lowering Joe. It has been a couple of years since I read the book but they had got down most of the way and were finally thinking that they would make it,...then crapola.”

“Seems I remember that the movie starts with a scene of someone setting an ice screw?”

“Yeah but you know movies, was it a flash forward or a flash back,

or a flash gordon LOL.”

“lol true...”

“Sorry again if I sounded condescending.

Good for your daughter.

Even Simpson notes that he dislikes descents because that's when the shyte happens.

The best book I ever read was 'Annapurna, premier 8 000 mètres' by Maurice Herzog. Once again it was about coming back. My two other favourites are 'Into Thin Air' and Touching the Void'.

I'm anal because I feel very strongly about my responsibilities with young people. Canada has had its share of tragedies, including the high school kids from Alberta who were killed in an avalanche while backcountry ski-ing in BC last year.

In my second year of teaching - 1978 - there was a horrible accident when some young, smart-arsed teachers brought some kids canoing in northern Quebec.

They had modified custom built canoes. Why these people thought they could improve a thousands year-old design escapes me. They also ignored the advice of the locals who told them the lake was too rough to go out. I think about 16 died of hypothermia as the teachers struggled to rescue them.

What sickens me is that the teachers were treated as heroes afterward. There's a new book out about it.

Closer to home is Yves Laforest, the first Quebec-born person to summit Everest. He came to our school to give a talk to our students and I talked to him and shook his hand.

He moved to BC and was on a charity fund raising climb there two years ago. The climb wasn't technically difficult and so to spice things up, they decided to paddle back to civilisation after the climb.

The problem was that the river had never been done and the boats were of a new, unproven design. They never found any of their bodies.

I guess that's about all I have to say.

Thanks for the patience.”

“A great mountaineering book is Peter Boardman "The Shining Mountain" is a great tale wher 2 guys do the same sort of thing but no accidents.

Siula Grande (Simpson/Yeates) is 6344m in the Andes in 1985.

Changabang (Boardman/Tasker) is 6864m in the himalaya in 1976.”

“ON NPT right now”

“watching it now... scarey stuff”

“I'm not letting any of my family members watch. They would never let me go winter hiking again. lol”

“damn. the more i watch this, the less i feel like i came to a near death experience last sunday. this is intense.”

“Watched it on PBS tonight...interesting!”

“very interesting. frightening.”

“I was pretty taken in with it. Very well done. Every time he hit that knee, my spine would cringe! Good film...”

“This is what I just posted on the other TTV thread:

Amazing story. I wish the ending hadn't been so abrupt though. It was such a gripping, suspenseful movie, and then in about 2 minutes, it was like they said, "And then he made it to the hospital, he climbed again in two years, other climbers critisized the other guy. The end."

But still, a great movie.”

“Ruby,

Get the DVD, it has the rest and more.

Doug”

“I finally got to watch the movie last night,I think they did a pretty good job with it.I agree the ending was a bit abrupt.The book went into alot more detail!!”