Joe Simpson, with just his partner Simon Yates, tackled the unclimbed Western world Face from the remote 21,000 feet Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in June 1995. But before they reached the summit, disaster struck. A couple of days later on, Simon staggered into Base Camp, tired and frostbitten, to tell their non-climbing partner that Joe was dead. For three times he wrestled with guilt as they prepared to return home. A cry in the night had taken them out with torches, where they found Joe, badly harmed, crawling through the snowstorm inside a delirium. Definately not causing Joe’s loss of life, Simon had paradoxically saved his friend’s life. What happened, and exactly how they handled the emotional traumas that resulted when Simon was compelled into the appalling decision to cut the rope, makes not merely an epic of survival but a persuasive testament of camaraderie.