| A man was on a 21,000-foot peak in the Andes Mountains where a fall broke his leg severely. Joe Simpson and his friend, Simon Yates were experienced mountain climbers but were not prepared for this grueling disaster in the hours that followed Joe's fall. Surviving in sub zero temperatures, treacherous icy cliffs and a severe injury left Joe helpless while his climbing partner, Simon had to make difficult decisions for both of their survivals.
Simon decided to painfully lower injured Joe slowly with ropes in the blinding snow and used tugs on the ropes as their communications. A few hours went by as the climbing team tried in vein to avoid deep crevices and avalanches while the roaring wind and no visibility made the situation much worse. Simon felt no life on the other side of the rope for quite some time before he decided to cut his end, assuming his friend Joe had died from the descending attempts. The story progresses into unbelievable human emotion as Simon expresses the guilt he felt of not being able to save his friend and cutting the rope for his own survival as he makes the daring descend down to base camp to tell the sad news to others. Meanwhile, Joe was not dead at all but seriously injured and crawled and slid down the mountain with no water or food for two days in blizzard conditions. Simon was packing up Joe's belongings and getting ready to leave camp to tell Joe's family the horrible news when all of a sudden he heard a howling wolf. The howling was coming from Joe unbeknownst to Simon until he decided to go investigate and was flabbergasted to see his injured friend a few miles from base camp. | ||
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Plot & Themes Exploring/Searching... - tall mountains Outdoors story Yes Exploring: - surviving in outdoors Period of greatest activity? - 1950+ Subject of Biography Gender - Male Profession/status: Ethnicity - White Setting How much descriptions of surroundings? - 8 () Mountains/Cliffs Yes Mountains: - falling off - climbing with ropes Century: - 1980's-Present Writing Style Book makes you feel? - challenged Pictures/Illustrations? - More in color 6-10 How much dialogue in bio? - roughly even amounts of descript and dialog How much of bio focuses on most famous period of life? - 51%-75% of book |
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