just watched it again tonight on C4+ (or whatever)and I now have a different slant on it - I just kept seeing fear and paranoia in the eyes of the guy who cut the rope (mind you - I still think the crawl down was superhuman)
I wasn't going to comment on TTV, but I saw the programme too.
I thought that both of them were berks in the first place. Don't I recall that mountaineers tackling something major like this are supposed to be in a larger group, and have slightly better ground support than some random, vaguely camp backpacker they picked up a couple of days earlier who wasn't a climber and only knew their first names and how to burn trousers?
And didn't a couple of far, far more experienced American climbing teams give this a look over just a year or two before, get halfway up and then decide that it was far too dangerous to be tackled because of the iceledges and ravines? "The route opened by Simon and Joe has never been repeated" it says at the end of the credits. I'm not bloody surprised if the route was that suicidal anyway - they didn't achieve something fantastic, they got into exactly the sort of trouble others said would happen!
But I did think it was a remarkable study in chinless Britishness. It reminded me of the Charge Of the Light Brigade and Dunkirk - when we put our minds to it, we British can really f*ck things up right royaly in the most spectacularly stupid display of mindless optimism and misplaced belief in our abilities, but boy! have we got a capacity for keeping a stiff upper lip and crawling back?
yes... I just wish the PT would look at this forum and realise we want them to change the HOMEPAGE ... update etc...ie: tell us what is actually going on
Touching the void is apparently a reference to lying monumentally f*&$%ked in a crevasse, reaching out to God, and finding the Almighty isn't there. Only nothingness. As it's late and i'm the only one in the chat room, I feel I too am reaching out and touching just a void, but I am warm and safe in NW5 and not shivering my tits off in a spectral cathedral of whispering ice with my femur driven through my knee bone. There are no words to impart my respect for Joe S in (i) summoning the courage to lower himself further into the crevasse, (ii) dragging himself down the mountain with every bump recreating the original break, and (iii) standing by the mate that cut him loose after returning to Blighty when most simply bayed for his blood. No disrespect intended to anyone else cos i'm about to shift context slightly, but I don't think these guys are chinless berks, although i agree this could only have happened to 3 Brits. Imagine Bud, Brad and Chuck doing the same kind of book and film? It'd be The 10 Most Effective Habits of Successful Crevasse Escapees with Tom fricking Cruise playing the lead or I'm a successful playwright. Anyhow, the suggestion that they are chinless berks who shouldn't have been there bothers me. Surely they were people with imagination, ambition and dreams, like everyone in the forum. They just wrote their drama on a mountain. If anybody entering this competition penned anything a tenth as gripping, they'll win it. And is somebody ever going to tell us who that is for God's/Void's sake? My brother tells me the book is even better than the documentary by the way. For my part, I would cut the rope on a fellow climber who knew what they were doing, but not on someone whom I loved who was only there cos I badgered them into it. You'd owe such a person a bit more than that. Maybe even your life.
There are no words to impart my respect for Joe S in (i) summoning the courage to lower himself further into the crevasse, (ii) dragging himself down the mountain with every bump recreating the original break
Couldn't agree more Inspector.
My point was that they shouldn't have been in that situation in the first place!
Touching the void is apparently a reference to lying monumentally f*&$%ked in a crevasse, reaching out to God, and finding the Almighty isn't there.
When Joe dies, if by any strange fluke he suddenly finds himself in front of God, I wonder if the conversation would go something like this;
Joe: Hey! You exist! Well, God, I have to say I'm really disappointed. Where were you when I needed you? I prayed and everything, and you never answered - I even wrote a book all about how you didn't exist!
God: What do you mean, didn't exist? Not there?! You ungrateful little pr1ck! Who do you think made sure you dropped into snow when you first fell? Who do you think gave you enough rope to get down into the crevass? Who do you think made the crevass open at the bottom? Who do you think left Simon's footprints in the snow for you to follow? Who do you think made Simon hang around at the base camp for 3 days after he got back?
And after getting over the fact that God does really look like Morgan Freeman, but deciding not to mention it, Joe would ask why the Boney M then and God would say he moves to mysterious grooves. Why shouldn't they have been there? They felt most alive on mountain tops and sought them out as best 2 young guys with little money could. Isn't that where they belong?
I like Inspector 71. That line about turning Touching the Void into a movie called "I'm awesome! Buy my action figure!" starring Tom Cruise is as good a lambasting of American capitalism ruining everything as I've seen this week.
And not to gang up on you Adman, but I do think that life is a risk/reward investment. I also think, in fairness, once you have a partner and/or dependants, the ratios on the risk/reward should change. At least in regard to adventure travel. My husband is a serious mountain climber - ice climbing is his favorite - and so I have thought about this a lot.
You owe it to yourself and the people you love not to take stupid risks. But telling which ones are stupid is kind of hard up front. So as long as you understand the possible consequences, life really should be about taking some risks. And you do owe it to yourself to take risks - artistically, emotionally, physically - because greatness lies therein.
Because they had no back-up and were attempting to do something that more experienced teams had said was too dangerous to be achieved - and the others proved to be right.
Fair play, if they want to do it, fine, and I think Joe showed amazing stamina - but let's not make them out as heros for failing in EXACTLY the way others more experienced than them said they would!
I catch your drift Adman (and agree with a lot of what you say) BUT .... the word "berk" cannot be associated with a guy who went to hell and back and survived through his own superhuman willpower (ironically though he would probably call himself a berk right now)
(not the act but the product)
