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

Since his epic battle for survival in the Andes, recounted in the bestselling Touching the Void, Joe Simpson has endured several further brushes with death and has suffered the loss of many climbing friends in accidents which call into question the exhilarating, death-defying activity to which he has devoted his whole life. Never more alive than when most at risk, he has come to see an attempt on the Eiger, with its hooded, mile-high North Face, as the culmination of his climbing career.In a narrative which takes the reader through extreme experiences from an avalanche in South America, ice-climbing in the Alps and Colorado and paragliding in Spain ? before his final confrontation with the Eiger and two more deaths ? 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.

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.

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.

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!

2008-05-27 Eiger experiences

In the world of mountaineering writing Joe Simpson is without peer. There seem to be two reasons for this. First, Simpson is one of those people to whom things just keep happening. Famously, in "Touching the Void", he shatters a leg in a fall, is left to die at high altitude by his climbing partner and yet still struggles to safety. In other books, he gets swept up by avalanches, caught up in snowstorms and suffers many other close scrapes. Eventually, in this book, as he reflects on the near misses and the number of his friends who have died in various misadventures, Simpson decides to hang up his crampons for good. But before he does so, he decides to tackle the infamous north face of the Eiger, known as the "Mordwand" or Murder Face by the locals because of the large number of climbers dying in an attempt to climb it. A mile-high, sheer cliff of rock and ice, the Mordwand has been an unforgiving test of a climber's ability over the years though, according to Simpson, advances in the quality of equipment have made it much more feasible. One of the local guides points out that with advances in mountain rescue that despite the Eiger's grim reputation that it had been many years since the last death on the face. But Simpson is somebody to whom things happen and as he sets foot on the face, people start falling off.

But that's not the whole reason. There are many other climbers who have written of death-defying adventures. Simpson's second asset is that he's also a superb tailor of prose. He describes the climbs and hang-gliding flights in such vivid detail yet with such pace that you feel as if you're there with him. And this is where Simpson wins out over other mountaineering writers who simply write of their experiences -- Simpson's natural storytelling skills draw you in rather than leaving you feeling that you've read a bare, dry narrative.

One small detail had a personal appeal to me. Simpson talks of how he read Harrer's "The White Spider" (the book detailing the first ascent of the Mordwand) as a child and it convinced him that he never wanted to be a mountaineer, yet he became one. I also read it as a child and it convinced me that I *did* want to, but I never followed it up. Ironically, it's now reported that the White Spider is no longer a fiendish ice field, destroyed by global warming.

I'm not going to spoil things by saying whether Simpson is successful in his climb or not, but clearly he survives to write the book! At the end though, there's some doubt as to whether this really was the final climb. I hope that, if it wasn't, Simpson will continue to share his adventures with us.