In 1985, two mountain climbers had just begun to make their way down from the peak of an extremely tall and dangerous mountain. When one of them suddenly slipped on the side of a cliff, breaking his leg, when his partner, who was attached to him through a long, thick rope, frantically climbed down and rushed beside him. He was horrified to find them writhing in unbearable pain on the ground.

It was clear that he was no longer able to even stand up, much less still be able to make the long and brutal trek back down the mountain. This was a massive problem. Not only were they still many miles away from the next closest human, they were also completely out of gas and drinking water already. The horrifying reality was if they didn't come up with a plan to get them both back down to their camp and fast, they would soon die from hypothermia and dehydration.

To make matters even worse, this injured climbers soon found themselves hanging far off the edge of an ice cliff with nothing but his connected rope, preventing him from falling. And before long, his partner was faced with an impossible choice to either stay with his friend and likely die with him, or to cut his rope and leave his friend to die to save his own life.

Welcome back, guys. My name is Andy Jiang, and this is hidden stories. In June 1985. Two highly experienced British mountain climbers named Joe Simpson and Simon Yates set off on a journey to try to make history. At the time, the west face of the solar Granada Mountains in Peru had never been successfully scaled before. Although many climbers in the past had made attempts to try and reach the mountain peaks, they had all failed due to the extremely unpredictable cliffs, glaciers and snow in the area.

As a result, it was widely regarded as one of the most difficult and also as one of the most dangerous climbs that anyone could ever attempt. Since Joe and Simon were both basically expert Alpinist who genuinely love this sport, however, they were confident that if anyone could pull it off, it would be them. As they actually began to start climbing up this year, La Grande, they became even more certain in themselves.

By the end of the first day, they had already made a really good progress and had been able to navigate through some pretty tricky sections of rock and ice without any complications. Although this year, the ground they had looked far steeper and taller than any mountain they had ever climbed before as they were approaching it, now that they were actually on it making their way up.

It really wasn't that bad. But despite their boosted confidence on their second day of climbing, Joe and Simon finally understood why so many people had failed and gotten injured on this climb in the past. By the time they reached near the top of the mountain, around 20,000 feet in the air, it started snowing. Ferocious howling winds being the costly sub against their bodies.

And the temperature outside became almost unbearably court to the point where the snow that landed on Joe and Simon would actually stick to the surface of their clothes and immediately freeze forming a sort of suit of ice armor around them. Furthermore, since neither Joe nor Simon had ever climbed that fat high of an altitude before it, their hearts were pumping like crazy, making every single one of their movements incredibly difficult and exhausting.

And to make matters even worse, the last leg of the climb up the west face of the ground, there was an absolute nightmare. The hardest part by far to navigate, since this region of the mountain was pretty much entirely just completely unstable. Powder snow. Joe and Simon could have put any anchors in place to help them with the climb.

Instead, they were forced to just use their entire full body strength to just physically will themselves upwards, slowly and painstakingly trudging one step after another because of just how thick the powder snow here was, and also because of the brutal storm. It took two and Simon more than 5 hours to climb, just 200 feet. Since by then, the two were completely worn out.

And every time they stopped to rest for even a short while, it felt like they were getting hypothermia. They finally decided to call it a night, and they dug a snow cave to get some rest. Fortunately, by the time morning came, the storm had subsided and the sun was out again. But even with clear visibility in the daytime, that final stretch of the mountain was some of the most terrifying, stressful and dangerous climbing that both Joe and Simon had ever done.

The snow that they were climbing over was so fine and so powdery that they were terrified that they would suddenly end up in a spot where they could no longer climb any further up, since they would never be able to get back down the way they came again due to how unstable it was. In other words, just a little bit of bad luck and they would both be completely trapped and basically as good as dead, but extremely luckily, nothing ever happened to them.

And a 2 p.m. on the third day of climbing, Joe and Simon became the first climbers ever to conquer the west face of the sea of the Crown. By then, however, they were both just so exhausted that they initially didn't even want to continue going just a little bit further to stand on the highest point of the mountain.

They eventually decided to do so, though, since they had come literally all this way. But after spending some time taking photos, admiring the view and hugging one another to celebrate their incredible accomplishment, Joe and Simon were both ready to finally start making their way back down the mountain instead of coming down the same nightmarish Westfield route that they had taken up.

They decided that they would descend on the North face, which was known for being easier and quicker. However, when they actually started their descent, they quickly realized that nothing at all about the North face was easy or quick. In fact, to their surprise, the terrain was almost just as dangerous and difficult to navigate as the west face of the mountain had been, which was made even worse by the fact that they also got caught in another heavy snowstorm.

And within just around half an hour into their journey from the summit. Joe and Simon were already camped, nearly lost. The raging storm and winds were sending such a thick layer of snow through the air that everyone, Joe and Simon looked. All they could see was just the color white. It was so bad that they could no longer even tell which way was up or down or right or left.

All they could really do was to just keep on blindly trudging forward, hoping that they'd be able to stumble across the ridge of a mountain again, which would help serve as a reference point. Eventually, Simon did finally come across the ridge, but he nearly fell off the side of the mountain, trying to locate it. By the end of the day, Joe and Simon were even more worried, but it somehow barely made much progress at all and was still at an altitude of around 20,000 feet.

Although the two had original only hope that they'd be able to make it all the way back down to their base camp at the very bottom of the mountain that day, they now had no choice but to settle down for the night and to try again the next day. But as they were making a brew to boil some fresh water for themselves, they had done so every single night.

So far, their gas supply suddenly ran out. Since not having any gas meant that they would no longer have access to any safe, drinkable water, this could have been a very big problem. However, since the storm had stopped and Joe and Simon were fairly confident that they'd be able to get all the way down the mountain within the next day.

They weren't too concerned about it. Right after they woke up the next morning, they quickly took off, taking advantage of the clear skies and great visibility, although they were still very high up on the mountain. It immediately became clear to the two climbers that they had already gone through the worst part of their descent the day before. All of the terrain and weather ahead of them seemed like it would be fairly easy to navigate and that it would impose many dangers or complications at all.

As such, Joe and Simon felt that they could finally breathe a sigh of relief in their minds. This entire climb was pretty much ready over, and all that was left for them to do was just get through this last, easiest section. However, the two never could have anticipated what was in store for them. A short while later, Joe was slowly climbing down the side of an ice cliff.

He was repeatedly embedding the two axes that he was holding into the thick ice as he maneuvered his way down, ensuring that he wouldn't fall. But although he had done this process countless times before in the past, without a problem this time when Joe was around, halfway down the cliff and swung one of his axes into the ice wall, he suddenly noticed that it wasn't as tightly lodged as it had always been.

Up until this point, a friend that he was going to fall, he decided to dislodge that ax so that he could remember it and to a safer location. But as he did dislodge it. The imbedded in his other head. The only thing that was keeping him from falling suddenly ripped out of the ice as well. As it turns out, that ax hadn't been tightly lodged either, but Joe just hadn't noticed it before he could even react.

He was suddenly falling, rapidly, plummeting towards the cold, hard ground, far below the moment Joe landed an explosion of almost incomprehensible pain suddenly saw it through his lower body. He had landed pretty much squarely on his right leg, and as a result, the impact of his fall had been almost completely, really absorbed by his right foot, driving his leg straight up into and then through his knee to it.

At first, the pain was so excruciating that Joe just couldn't even think or physically do anything at all but writhe on the ground, screaming in agony. Once a few minutes had gone by, though, and the pain had finally started to subside. Just enough for clear thoughts to finally introduce mind. Once again, an immense feeling of just sheer horror suddenly watched over him.

If he had broken his leg, he was as good as dead. Since Joe knew that they were still extremely high up on the mountain and that they still had at least more than half a day's worth of unimpaired climbing left to do to reach their base camp. He couldn't help but feel an impending sense of two as waves of shock, desperation and terror flowed in and out of Joe's mind, the rational part of him knew that he was screwed.

He knew that his partner, Simon, simply had no feasible way to carry him, to get them both safely down the mountain, and that he would be forced to leave him behind. But although Joe was half expecting Simon to just immediately leave the moment he found out about the devastating injury, to Joe, surprise Simon did it. He actually just didn't see much at all and simply headed Joe.

Some painkillers. Despite all logic and all common sense and despite the fact that Simon was putting himself entirely at risk of serious injury or death, he was really going to stay with him and attempt a Hail Mary to get them both down the mountain. The realization of this and what Simon was doing for him immediately jolted Joe back from his hopelessness and helped calming down a bit.

After discussing potential strategies for a while, the 2 minutes to come up with a system that might have just worked. Joe and Simon first tied their two individual ropes together, which gave them one really long rope, then tying one end of this rope to himself and the other to Joe. Simon began to slowly start lowering Joe down the mountain with it.

Every time he had finished the length of the rope, he would carefully climb down himself to join Joe and then repeat the process. But although the system did work, they were making very slow progress and it was also excruciatingly painful for Joe since Simon was forced to lower him as quickly as he could so that they could get on the mountain before frostbite or dehydration got to them.

On every cycle, Joe's broken leg kept getting repeatedly, tossed around and bent at the knee each time this happened. Joe desperately cried out, almost passing out from the sheer degree of pain. But Simon simply had no choice but to continue onwards. Over the next few hours, they carried on like this with each new round of lowering, feeling just as painful for Joe and just as exhausting for Simon.

But although they were making solid progress before long, they were hit by yet another brutal snowstorm with an unimaginable wind factor of run -80 degrees Fahrenheit. Both Joe and Simon begin to quickly develop frostbite on their fingertips and on their exposed face. However, despite feeling utterly depleted of any sort of energy at all and being so cold that he couldn't even feel his hands, Simon somehow continued to push onwards, lowering Joe again and again.

Although everything that they knew about mountaineering was screaming at them to stop and take shelter, to wait for the storm to pass. They simply couldn't. So they didn't have any water. And since by then, both Joe and Simon had already gone nearly a day without rehydrating. They were desperately thirsty and knew that they just couldn't wait another day or longer for the storm to stop.

But as Simon just continued their lowering process again and again in this intense storm, inevitably disaster eventually struck as the storm and made it extremely hard to see or hear much that was going on in front of Simon when Joe suddenly hit a slope that just kept on getting steeper and began desperately screaming for him to stop. SIMON, completely oblivious, just kept on lowering the rope in that slightly Lower Joe off a massive cliff, although his rope, when tugged and prevented Joe from completely plummeting to his death below, he was no hanging in mid-air off the side of this cliff with no way to lift himself back up again.

And since the ground below him was also much too far for him to be lowered down to using the rest of Simon's rope. In that moment, the last tiny shred of hope that Joe had been desperately trying to hold onto finally shattered. He felt completely and utterly helpless. There was nothing he could do but just hanging there in the freezing cold and wait to die.

He knew that the moment Simon found out about what had happened, he would have no choice but to cut the rope that was connecting the two of them to save himself. That was just the fact that Joe had accepted there was no longer any possible way for Simon to save him, even if he wanted to. However, far above Joe back on the ice Cliff Simon still wasn't even aware that something had gone wrong the way their lowering system worked.

Simon would lower the first half of the rope, and then once he reached a knot that connected the two smaller groups, he would tug on it to signal for Joe to take his weight off his head so that Simon could then lower the second half of the rope. As a result, when Simon realized that no weight was being removed from the rope, even after he had tugged on it, he became very confused.

He had no idea what had happened to Joe and just couldn't quite figure out what was taking him so long to just shift his weight. However, since there was just nothing that Simon could do either, but just wait for Joe to do his job on his end, he had no choice but to just pray that they'd be able to continue moving forward very soon.

But after almost an hour and a half had gone by and there was still no response from Joe, Simon knew that he had to take drastic measures since the snow that he had been sitting on was gradually sliding away from under him. He knew that sooner or later he would lose his positioning and be pulled off into the darkness, to wherever, to us.

By now, however, Simon had pretty much realized that Joe was probably hanging off a tall cliff somewhere ahead of him, and that if he was pulled towards Joe, they would both fall and both die as a result. When Simon remembered that he had a small penknife in his bag. He finally decided to take it out. It was no other choice.

He cut his rope as Joe was hanging in mid-air and barely conscious. At this point, he suddenly felt the rope give out, sending him hurtling towards the ground below. When he came to again, he found himself immersed in this dense, almost unnatural darkness. As he turned on his head towards and looked around. He suddenly realized what must have happened to his horror.

He'd fallen straight into a dark, open crevasse. It must have been at least 150 foot fault and given the terrain, Joe was surprised to even still be alive. He had gotten extremely lucky. If he had fallen just two or three feet further to his right or left, he would have gone down the steep pitch black holes in the crevasse where he certainly would have died.

Staring up at the faint lights was far above him, the only source of light coming from the crack in the ground that he'd fallen through. Joe immediately realized that it would be impossible for him to climb back up, even without a broken leg going further down, which didn't seem like it would be an option either. As Joe signed his head towards into the holes near him, he was unnerved to see that the beam of light just kept on going further and further down until it was consumed entirely by the darkness.

A horrible sense of dread and desperation suddenly gripped at Joe's mind. The crevasse was just too dark, too quiet, and he felt more alone than he'd ever been in his entire life. He was terrified, having lost a liter of blood already from his leg injury, feeling definitely thirsty and his muscles being completely worn out. He was in horrible condition, both mentally and physically.

Crying out Simon's name over and over and over again to no response. Joe simply lost it. He flew into a blind rage, cursing and screaming at the top of his lungs, slamming his fists into the snow and ice around him, over and over and over again. And we simply couldn't anymore. Then he broke down into tears, sobbing uncontrollably.

He knew that he was going to die in there all alone. And having fully surrounded himself, Joe blacked out the next morning when he woke up again. He could see a bit of sunlight coming in to the crevasse, indicating that it was now his fifth day on the mountain. Realizing that if Simon had survived the night, he would have likely immediately made his way down the cliff to try and find him at first light.

Joe once again tried calling out Simon's name, but to his immense sadness, he again received no response. Little did Joe know, however, that Simon had indeed tried finding him. He had repeated the yellow Joe's name into the crevasse earlier that morning, but either because the crevasse was too deep or Joe was sleeping at the time, Simon had heard no response and was forced to conclude that Joe was dead.

However, Joe wasn't dead and somehow he wasn't quite ready to give up on his life just yet either. Once Joe had realized that climbing back up the crevasse was would be impossible, he decided that the only thing left for him to do was to go down those bottomless holes at the bottom of the crevasse. The idea of doing this terrified him beyond belief.

He absolutely hated the darkness and a no guarantee at all that there would even be a way out at the very bottom of the hole. But although a lot of people really would have rather just waited to die, Joe forced himself to keep on moving. He knew that it was his only chance to survive. So making an intentional effort not to look down into the seemingly endless pit of darkness.

Joe began his slow descent into the void after what seemed like nearly an eternity of lowering himself through the pitch blackness, the tunnel finally began widening out until Joe finally found himself at the very bottom of the crevasse in an open cave like area. As he looked around, his heart immediately began racing, as he noticed that around 50 feet away from them, there was a large hole in the ceiling of the cave with beautiful, bright sunlight pouring out of it.

As Joe crawled on his stomach closer to the hole to his incredible excitement, he realized that he could reach it. It would be extremely difficult, but the slope was definitely claimable, even in his condition. But as Joe was crawling closer to the side of the cave with a hole was, to his horror. He suddenly heard a noise breaking away from underneath him.

He suddenly realized with alarm, that the photos supporting his body wasn't solid, it was hollow. And if the floor broke, he would fall and would never be able to reach the hole to the surface. In an incredible stroke of luck, though, to somehow managed to make it all the way to the other side of the cave without the fragile ice crumbling away underneath him.

Since climbing up the slope itself was also an excruciatingly painful process that inevitably required putting some weight on his broken right leg on multiple occasions still felt that he would really just faint from the sheer agony. However, he simply refused to give up and just grit his teeth and kept pushing forward and after a long, painfully slow climb, he finally made it to the surface back into the world as he collapsed onto the snow, feeling the warm rays of sunlight on his face.

Joe just started laughing out of pure relief, but when he sat up and took a look around him to get a gauge on his location, he very quickly stop laughing. He still had Miles and miles and miles left to go before he would be able to make it back to his base camp. And since his body condition at the time was so bad already that he probably could have been able to just collapse and fall asleep for days to recover from his complete state of deterioration.

Joe once again began to feel the feelings of dread and hopelessness creep up on him. It was impossible. There was just no way physically that he would be able to crawl all those miles back. He had already gone almost two full days without any real water or food. And he had also spent those days going through some of the worst pain and physical exertion of his entire life.

Since the full picture of the journey that Joe had left ahead of him was just way too astronomical for his brain to deal with and process. He soon came up with the idea of setting smaller targets for himself. He would see a boulder or some other landmark a short while ahead of him and give himself the goal of reaching it in some amount of minutes.

Then he would push himself as hard as he humanly could to achieve that goal. And if he did reach the location within his time frame, he would become hysterically happy about it. But if he did it, he would be upset, almost to the point of tears. Joe didn't know why, but he quickly became obsessed with these goals. They helped him push through the blinding pain in his leg, his almost maniacal desire for water, and the immense fatigue of his withered muscles over and over again.

Joe set these targets for himself and despite everything, continued to move and push onwards. Incredibly, he eventually came across the tracks that Simon had taken back to their base camp. This track soon became Joe's lifeline. However, after one a day of following them to Joe's horror, Simon's tracks suddenly disappeared. Once again, he was left completely on his own to try to figure out his way back.

To make matters even worse, the soft, snowy terrain soon transformed into sorbet. Hard rocks. Since Joe knew that he could no longer crawl over these rocks. He decided that he would have to try and just hop his way back. As such, he got rid of all of his snow gear and bound up his broken leg as best as he could.

Even before he started, he knew that inevitably he was going to follow on, and he suspected that this would likely be one of the most painful things that he would ever have to do. As it turns out, he was right. Joe tripped and fell to the ground on pretty much every single jump he made, and each time it felt like he was having his leg broken for the first time again.

Very often he was on the ground in such pain that he just couldn't even bear the concept of getting back up and falling once again. However, the goals that he kept setting for himself ensured that he kept moving forward. Every time Joe wanted to quit, a cold, deeply rational part of him would force him to get back up again, warning him that he only had a few minutes left to reach his target and that he had to reach his target.

As a result, as hours and then days went by. Although Joe's body tried to quit on him hundreds of times, this rest little part of his mind, refused to let him stop and just kept chasing after his goals and moving forward. It was an extremely agonizing journey, not only because of how painful and tiring it was very often to get your water running underneath the boulders that he was climbing on.

Since by this point, he'd already gone several days without drinking anything. Whenever he heard the running water, he would basically go feral, desperately trying to rip through the rocks to find the source. However, as the water was so deep, Joe could always hear it but never reach it. And psychologically, this really messed with his head. Despite everything, however, somehow Joe just kept on moving.

Although he'd already accepted the fact that he wouldn't be able to make the distance and that he would die. He just wanted to be with someone when he died, and that desire fueled him to push on forward. However, at around 4 p.m. on the third day of Joe being entirely on his own, he suddenly came across a familiar looking lick when he thought about it a bit more.

To his incredible surprise, he realized that this was the lake that had been right next to their base camp, and if he were to travel just a little bit further, he would actually come across the very valley that there had been set up here for the very first time. Joe finally allowed himself to believe that he could actually make it, that he could survive this entire ordeal.

But right as he really started to consider that prospect, a second, more horrifying thought suddenly popped into his head. Would there still even be anyone there? There was no chance, Joe thought. It had been almost four entire days since he had seen Simon, since Simon had probably made it back to camp two days before. There was simply no reason for him to still be there, especially given how exhausted and injured he had been from the climb and the more Joe thought about it, the more he fell into despair, and the more he was convinced that he would reach their base camp and find it completely empty.

As Joe continued to slowly crawl forward through this last stretch of his journey, he just couldn't push down these visceral feelings of fear dreading that Simon would have left him already by the time their base camp finally came into view. Joe's anxiety was spiking through the roof. He hesitated a little and then shouted Simon's name. And then again.

And then again, his heart pounding so desperately prayed that at any moment now he would hear Simon's voice calling out to him as well, and would see his familiar face poking out of the inside of one of the tents. But after a few moments had gone by, still all he heard was silence. Joe was completely crushed in that very moment.

He lost something. He lost himself. He had come all this way, gone through so much. For what? For nothing. He had made the mistake of letting himself have a little bit of hope. But now none of that mattered. Nothing mattered. And Joe crumbled to the ground, having lost all of his remaining will to live. All of a sudden, though, Joe started hearing voices.

He slowly lifted his head up, terrified that he was dreaming. And there he was. Simon, standing right outside of their tents. As it turns out, although Simon had indeed made it back down to the base camp two days before extremely luckily he decided to stay there for a while with one of their mutual friends so that he could just rest and recover for a little bit and sort of get the mountain out of it.

Since they'd been planning on finally leaving the area, the very next morning, had to arrive just a couple of hours later. He would have missed them. Simon had been sleeping that night when he was suddenly jolted awake by what sounded like a faint voice coming from outside of his tent. His first reaction was that it was Joe, but then he realized that that was impossible since Joe was dead.

However, to his incredible shock when he walked outside, it actually was Joe. He looked awful, almost ghostlike and almost unrecognizable. But it really was him. And although Simon had to pinch himself several times since it was so unbelief moveable, he finally prizes the fact that Joe had really managed to survive without any food and water for the past three days and had managed to drag himself all the way down the mountain by himself with a broken leg.

In the following weeks still went through six different surgeries. His injuries were extremely severe, and he had also lost an insane 35% of his body weight on the mountain because of just how badly his leg had been broken. Doctors told him that he would have trouble walking properly for the rest of his life. However, Joe would have none of this just two years of intense rehabilitation.

Later, he could not only walk normally, but had even returned back to mountain climbing again in total to had crawled and hopped over an incredible five entire miles through both bitter snow and rocky glacier terrains. Not only that, he did this with no food, no water, a broken leg. And also after he was already completely exhausted from being the first to ever climb one of the most dangerous and difficult mountain trails in the world.

Joe Simpson later went on to write a bestselling book about his experience called Touching the Void, which was eventually made into a documentary as well. Although his partner, Simon Yates, has gotten some backlash for leaving Joe on the mountain to save himself, Joe has always maintained that Simon not only did the right thing, he also went above and beyond to try to get both of them down the mountain, putting his own life on the line to try to save Joe's.

In fact, the very first thing that Joe said decided after he had crawled down from the mountains was, I have done the same. Take care, guys, and I'll see you all next week.