As an avid hiker and occasional mountaineer, I have been curious about watching “Touching the Void” for awhile now. Touching the Void is a movie based on a book by a man who went through an extraordinary experience climbing Mount Siula Grande in Peru. Siula Grande is a 20,813 foot tall mountain that had never been climbed via the West face before these two young men summited using that route. As they began their descent, one man broke his leg. They had run out of water and were desperate to get down so one man helped lower the other for a good distance.
Finally though, a whiteout storm came over them and the healthy man couldn’t see where he was lowering the other man and accidentally lowered him over a cliff. They sat there like that for an hour and a half since the healthy man couldn’t let go of the rope and the man with the broken leg couldnt climb back up. Finally, the healthy man cut the rope and the broken legged man fell 150 feet onto a ledge in a deep crevasse below. The healthy man left the other for dead and made his way down.
The other man actually managed to crawl out of the crevasse and down the mountain dragging his badly broken leg behind him. It took him 4 days with no water or food, severe dehydration and hypothermia, but he finally made it. He had lost 1/3 of his total body weight… and he had already been a lean mountaineer.
Crazy story and good movie. Watch it.