Читать книгу Extreme Survivors: 60 of the World’s Most Extreme Survival Stories - Collins Maps - Страница 50

Several teams had previously tried and failed to climb this face. Simon and Joe were successful, but bad weather had slowed their ascent, forcing them to use all their stove’s fuel. They would not be able to melt snow for drinking water on the way down. With the euphoria of their achievement fading they set out to descend via the difficult North Ridge.

Joe was leading with Simon roped 45 m (150 ft) behind him when he reached a tricky ice cliff. Joe decided to climb down the cliff using his crampons, ice axe and ice hammer. He got a good hold with the points of his crampons and dug his axe in to the ice wall. But as he was trying to get a perfect hold for his hammer, there was a crack and Joe’s world turned upside down.

He fell facing the slope and both knees locked as he hit the base of the cliff. There was a crunching split in his right knee and he screamed at a surge of unimaginable pain. Thrown backwards by the impact he slid down the East Face of Siula Grande head first on his back.

‘You’re dead… no two ways about it! I think he knew it too. I could see it in his face.’

Somehow he stopped and looked back. His left leg was tangled in the rope. His right was twisted into a sickening zigzag. The tibia had smashed up into his knee joint and shattered it. There was no way he could walk, let along climb. The pair were 5,800 m (19,000 ft) up on the ridge and alone. The mountaineer inside him knew that he had just been given a death sentence. The man who was looking at his own grotesquely swollen knee did not want to believe that.