Hi folks,

I haven't seen any mention of the movie "Touching the Void" on this forum. It's come out on DVD, I recently got it from NetFlix.

For those of you who have read Deep Survival, by Lawrence Gonzales, Touching the Void is a movie about one of the more remarkable survival stories detailed in that book. It is part interview, part re-enactment, of the two mountain climbers (Joe and Simon) who challenged the unclimbed face of a particularly rough mountain in the Andes.

A quick primer: on their descent, Joe fell and injured himself, which should have been a death sentence right there. Simon found a way to continue helping Joe with the descent, but everything that could go wrong did. At one point, Simon has to cut the rope tethering him to Joe, to save his own life. The resulting story is an incredible display of survivor thinking.

Very entertaining movie, check it out!

-- Joe Talmadge

I've been following the movie and interviews over this remarkable story. This is another reason my only technical climbing will be like the Monty Python skit scaling the curbside <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />.

have a look at
that thread

That kind of climbing is fraught with its own special perils - the horrors of getting fresh gum stuck to the collar of your shirt where you can't easily pull it off with your teeth, for example ...

There aren't a lot of movies that I want to buy on DVD and the ones I do buy are mostly for playing on my laptop during 8 hour flights <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> but I saw "Touching the Void" when it was playing in theatres and it's definitely one I want to add to my collection. The only problem with it is that, because of the strong language, I couldn't show it to a youth group, despite the obvious educational value. (Unavoidable, really. I mean, let's face it - when you've just driven your shinbone up through your kneecap, saying "Oh dear, I have hurt my leg" just wouldn't have that quality of realism that made the movie so compelling.) <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Maggot:

That would only be a problem if you were in your house, the shirt is on the floor, the gum belongs to the girlfriend who is there with you, and your wife is coming through the door.

Bountyhunter <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />