Product Description

Elegiac, immensely readable, full of the real excitement of climbing' M. John Harrison, TLS

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #110731 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Synopsis
Simon Yates is the man who cut the rope in Joe Simpson's award-winning account of their struggle for survival in "Touching the Void". In this book, Yates recounts how he and three companions climbed the world's largest vertical rock-face, in the Chilean Andes.

From the Back Cover
Simon Yates is 'the one who cut the rope' in Joe Simpson's award-winning account of their epic struggle for survival in Touching the Void. Afterwards, Yates continued mountaineering on the hardest routes. Perhaps the most testing of all was one of the world's largest vertical rockfaces, the 4, 000-ft East Face of the Central Tower of Paine in Chile. Battered by ferocious storms and almost crippled with fear just below the summit, Yates and his three companions are forced into a nightmare retreat. After resting in a nearby town, they return to complete the climb, but Yates knows he still has to face one of life's greatest challenges...
'In recent years, self-examination has lined up with crampons, belays and jumaring as a standard component of mountaineering literature. Against the Wall is a beguiling mix of all these things, blended with honesty in a workmanlike, solid prose style. It is an engaging book, both the story of another great climb and a wistful acknowledgement that nothing, in any area of our lives, is ever quite what it seems' Sara Wheeler, Literary Review

About the Author
Simon Yates has climbed extensively in the Himalayas and the Andes, and travelled through India, Kazakhstan and Australia. His first book, Against the Wall, was runner-up for the Boardman Tasker Award for mountain literature.

Customer Reviews

Climbing ok, but could do without the self-analysis
Having recently seen Into The Void, I snapped this book up during a recent visit to the charity shop. As it turned out, it's nothing to do with the famous Joe/crevasse legend, but recounts a difficult climb attempted in Patagonia by the author and 3 climbing friends, all relatively young and green at the time. I've read a few climbing books and in general they're written to record something exceptional (Messner/Krakauer/Simpson), and I suppose I expected this book would be in a similar vein, but the chapters just drifted by in a dull haze of descriptions about the various climbing difficulties to be overcome. I thought, What is the point of this book ? Eventually, towards the end, it's revealed. Simon has a crisis, not happy, doesn't want to take part in the final attempt for the summit. Fine, but then he tries to explain what the problem was, and leaves the reader none the wiser. He talks opaquely about dealing with things back home that he's avoided for too long, but doesn't say what these things are. It's several years since he wrote the book so I hope he's got rid of these demons by now. But apart from the self-analysis aspect, the book's good, a realistic account of a difficult climb in an interesting part of the world.

Thought provoking...
Simon's description of his attempt to summit the Central Tower of Paine in Patagonia was slightly disappointing to me in its lack of emotional description. He does describe the technical difficulties of climbing a vertical rock face very well, enabling readers to envisage just what an enormous undertaking this is. As I read the book through, I felt I was always waiting for something more from Simon, but it never really happened. He writes well how he comes to realise that climbing the summit is not worth risking his life for, but this also makes the book ending slightly flat. I have read far better written mountaineering / adventure books.

Gripping � Well written a must read!
I really enjoyed this book, I am a non-climber and could not put the book down, so much so I have since visited a seminar which proved that Simon is as good at public speaking as he is at writing. Simon knows you do not need to make a vertical assent to climb a mountain. I am looking forward to picking up the Flame of Adventure Simon's second book, and I can not wait.