Product Description

Joe Simpson has experienced a life filled with adventure but marred by death. He has endured the painful attrition of climbing friends in accidents, calling into question the perilously exhilarating activity to which he has devoted his life. Probability is inexorably closing in. The tragic loss of a close friend forces a momentous decision upon him. It is time to turn his back on the mountains that he has loved. Never more alive than when most at risk, he has come to see a last climb on the hooded, mile-high North Face of the Eiger as the cathartic finale. In a narrative which takes the reader through extreme experiences from an avalanche in Bolivia, ice-climbing in the Alps and Colorado and paragliding in Spain before his final confrontation with the Eiger, Simpson reveals the inner truth of climbing, exploring both the power of the mind and the frailties of the body. The subject of his new book is the siren song of fear and his struggle to come to terms with it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16323 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 328 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In The Beckoning Silence, climber Joe Simpson, author of the bestselling Touching the Void, recounts how his mountain dreams became shadowed by the deaths of friends and heroes, and hampered by the weight of probability that his own life would end in the same way. The result is a valedictory attempt on the North Face of the Eiger, a summation of his lifelong enchantment with climbing, and the parlaying of rock-solid risk with intangible rewards. It was a final adventure that would itself be touched by tragedy.

Simpson has established himself as the leading mountaineering writer of his time, and The Beckoning Silence is a bold reassertion of that status. Always strong on the personal meaning of the challenge, here he is superb on the bubbling fear that forms such a critical element of the climber's kit; the minutiae of circumstance that seemingly separate the survivors and the dead; and the crisis that envelopes a climbing partnership on the mountainside, at the instant extreme pressure disturbs the balance of shared ambition and ability.

Tat turned and looked speculatively up the corner and I felt even angrier that he might still be risking my life. What can you do if he insists? I mean, you can't pull him off. That would kill us. If he insists, then you'll have to un-rope. Jesus! Tell him that. "Tat?" I said quietly, hearing the fear in my voice.

The narrative takes Simpson to Bolivia, the Alps, Colorado and to the foot of the Eiger, where he receives a uniquely rich and moving tutorial on the history of the challenge that lies ahead. Simpson fans need know no more than that this may be his finest effort to date. For the uninitiated, there is simply no more evocative, emotionally literate author writing on this subject today.--Alex Hankin

About the Author
Joe Simpson won the Boardman Tasker Award and the NCR Award for his bestseller Touching the Void, which has been published all over the world. His later books, all bestsellers, include This Game of Ghosts, Dark Shadows Falling, Storms of Silence and a novel, The Water People.

Excerpted from The Beckoning Silence by Joe Simpson. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Games on a dangerous stage
The ice was thin and loosely attached to the rock. I could see water streaming beneath the opaque layer undermining its strength. I glanced down to the left and saw Ian 'Tat' Tattersall hunched over, stamping his feet at the foot of the ice wall. He was cold and I was taking far too long. I could sense his impatience. This first pitch of Alea Jacta Est, a 500-foot grade V ice climb looming above the valley of La Grave in the Hautes Alpes, France, should have been relatively straightforward. It had felt desperately difficult and precarious.
I looked down at where I had placed my last ice screw in a boss of water ice protruding from a fractured and melting ice wall 35 feet below me. If I fell now I would drop 80 feet and I knew the ice screw would not hold me. The ice boss would shatter and it would be instantly ripped out. It had quickly become apparent that the route was in poor condition. Lower down I had found myself moving from solid ice onto a strange skim of water ice overlaying soft, sugary snow. It was just strong enough to hold my axe picks and crampon points but it would never hold an ice screw. Hoping for an improvement I had climbed higher and moved diagonally towards the right side of the wall. Then the ice began to resemble something more commonly found furring up the icebox in my fridge. I moved tentatively over rotten honeycombed water ice and onto frightening near-vertical slabs of rime ice - a feathery concoction of hoarfrost and loosely bonded powder snow. It was now impossible to down-climb safely and I tried to quell a rising tide of panic as I had headed gingerly towards the ice boss that was gleaming with a wet blue sheen near where a rock buttress bordered a rising curtain of ice.
As I twisted the ice screw into the boss, I watched in dismay as a filigree pattern of cracks spread through water ice. I saw water seeping out from beneath the fractures and stopped winding the screw. Clipping the rope to the screw I tried to ignore the fact that it was my first point of protection and that it wouldn't hold my weight let alone a fall. If I fell, I knew that I would hit the ground from over 100 feet. I glanced back at Tat but he wasn't looking at me. It was surprising how very lonely you can suddenly feel.
I moved up slowly, gently hooking my axe picks in melt holes in the ice, careful to pull down and not out. Myright foot slipped away as wet ice sheared from the rock and I shuddered down, then stopped. I breathed deeply and stepped up again, forcing the single front-point of my crampons into a shallow crack in the rock and balancing on it as I reached higher and planted my axe into a marginally thicker layer of ice. There was a cracking noise as the ice flexed free of the underlying rock, then silence as it held my weight. I held my breath and pulled steadily on the axe shaft.
The route description mentioned a near-vertical wall of ice trending rightwards. I remembered the old adage about ice climbing which stated that 75-degree ice feels vertical and vertical ice seems overhanging. I felt physically strong but mentally my resolve had begun to crumble. It had been a slow, insidious leeching away of my confidence directly proportional to the height I gained. Above me a rock wall reared up and the ice curved into a short corner. I spotted a small piece of red tape poking out from beneath a fringe of wet snow. The belay, I thought with relief, protection, safety at last.
My spirits rose at the welcome sight and I made delicate moves up the ice wall until I was perched cautiously on the tips of my crampon points digging into a moustache of frozen moss and turf. I was alarmed to notice that the turf was not part of a rocky ledge but simply a tuft of vegetation glued to the rock wall. I reached up with my axe and carefully pushed the pick through the small loop of red tape. An experimental tug indicated that it was a solid anchor and I relaxed as the tension ebbed away.
'I've found the belay,' I shouted over my shoulder. There was no answer from below. I swept the dusting of snow from around the tape, hoping to reveal a couple of strong bolts. My heart sank as I saw two knife-blade pitons that had been driven half their length into a hairline crack in the rock. The tape had been tied off around the blades to reduce the outward leverage that would have been exerted if the eyes of the pitons had been clipped. I looked quickly around for some other protection to back up this worryingly feeble belay. There was nothing. No cracks for wires or pitons and the nearest ice was too thin and weak to take an ice screw.
I looked down past my boots. A rocky buttress plunged away beneath my crampon points. There was now a fall of over 150 feet if the two blade pegs ripped out. I began to feel nervous. A shout from below was muffled by the sound of a passing truck on the nearby road.
'What?' I yelled.
'Are you safe?' Tat yelled. I glanced at the two pegs and my stomach tightened. This isn't good, I told myself sternly. We're on holiday. This is supposed to be fun!

Customer Reviews

another mountaineeing classic from Joe Simpson
Joe Simpson, author of four thoughtful and highly praised mountaineering books returns to print, older and mindful of the effects mountaineering has had on himself and his friends. At the beginning of the book he is soberly considering giving up the sport given the personal cost (multiple serious injuries) and the cost to others (losing an average of one friend per year killed on the mountains). As Simpson himself points out it you keep putting your head in the lion's mouth, however good or skilled or lucky you believe yourself to be, sooner or later he will shut it. Simpson's tales from past climbs (including the tragedy of a friend who gave up mountaineering only to be killed after taking up paragliding) his agonising over the rising death toll, the camaradie and resourcefulness of mountaineers and the personal considerations of what he will do next, form the first half of the book.

The second half tells the tale of an attempt on the North Face of the Eiger, a nearly 2 mile height of sheer rock and ice, doing this classic alpine route is to be Simpson's valedectory to climbing. In this he tells superbly the story of the mountain and the many (often tragic) stories of previous attempts followed by his own attempt. The sheer terror of the storm that breaks during the ascent and the tragedy that ensues when two (possibly three) other climbers are killed is evoked in moving but clear and gripping prose.

Simpson writes wonderfully about mountains and those who seek to conquer them. Even if (like me) you have never climbed a mountain in your life and don't intend to, read Joe Simpson for his marvellous descriptions, his superb prose and his evocation of life at the literal edge - physically and psychologically.

More thinking than climbing
"I often wondered if these heroes of mine ever climbed with quite such a baggage of fears and dark terrors as I did."

Joe Simpson is the writer who let out the secret - all your climbing heroes get scared. Fear can make a climber turn back well before they have even reached the mountain, let alone half-way up a crumbling ice climb. But there are real dangers, of falls, storms and avalanche, that each year seem to kill more of Simpson's friends. Here, the fear and the deaths have almost stopped him mountaineering, but there's one last climb he has to do - the North Face of the Eiger.

It's a book that won't satisfy everyone, as Simpson often seems to spend far more time thinking about climbing that actually doing it, and in the first half he gets nowhere near that north face, instead taking us through another few years of an autobiography that started with "This Game of Ghosts". But really, no one does do climbing books as well as Joe Simpson with his black humour, honesty and insight, and this is something of a masterclass. He can even sneak in a pretty good history of climbing on the Eiger, while psyching himself up for the climb, that quickly dismisses any worry that he might just be doing a little padding out. Of course, the original and best book on the Eiger is Heinrich Harrer's "The White Spider", and Joe Simpson has already had a pretty good go at writing the best climbing book of all time in "Touching the Void". This one is never going to quite match up, but that doesn't stop it being thought-provoking, gripping, compulsory reading for anyone interested in the mountains.

A Gripping Read
I shall not try to review this book because this has been more than adequately covered by others on this website. I would rather explain to you my reactions to reading the book:-

I was first introduced to Joe Simpson when I was given a copy of Touching the Void as a talking book. The raw excitement and danger made me eager for more of the same. As a non-climber, I was aware of the North Face of The Eiger as a challenging climb – but remained otherwise uninformed. And so, I turned to The Beckoning Silence merely as an interesting and hopefully exciting read. I didn’t expect that this would be the only book that I have ever read and then immediately re-read .

Joe Simpson has a way of telling his story that is effortless to the reader – the text is plainly worded but this does not detract from his powers of description. Mr Simpson has taken a good story and interwoven it with tales of other climbers and the incidents of friends and acquaintances in such a way to produce a superb read. The section of the book where Joe and his friend Ray start to climb the Eiger was absolutely gripping – the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet were sweating with the vicarious thrill.

Much of the book is spent describing the dangers of climbing and examining where the acceptable danger threshold is. As one who has taken part in dangerous sports, I have asked myself many of the same questions – and resolved them at an earlier age. At the end of the book, I remained unconvinced that Joe was ready to hang up his climbing gear – and am hopeful that there is another climbing book or two in him yet.

The selection of the photos used in this book amplifies the interest in it. Each and every one of the pictures is relevant to the text and is part of the story – I returned time and time again to view each one in turn.

A great adventure book that will remain on my bookshelf: Read it soon.