National Park After Dark - The Cost of Survival: The Cordillera Huayhuash Reserved Zone (Part 2)

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

In the previous episode, a catastrophic fall high on Siula Grande forced an impossible decision. With Joe badly injured and hanging in space, Simon cut the rope, believing his climbing partner was lost. Now, high in the Cordillera Huayhuash Reserve, both men must attempt to get off the mountain alive. Joe is alone with a shattered leg and no supplies. Simon is stranded high on the face with night closing in and no clear way down. Survival is no longer about the climb, but about whether either of them can endure what comes next. For a full list of our sources, visit http://npadpodcast.com/episodesFor the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials at: Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdark Support the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page! Thank you to the week’s partners!Liquid IV: Use our code NPAD at checkout to get 20% off your first order.Avocado Green Mattress: Get 15% off mattresses at AvocadoGreenMattress.com/NPADHello Fresh: Use our link to get get 10 free meals + a FREE Zwilling Knife (a$144.99 value) on your third box.SelectQuote: Life insurance is never cheaper than it is today. Get the right life insurance for YOU, for LESS, and save more than fifty percent at selectquote.com/npad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Plan your Scottish escape today at Expedia.com slash Visit Scotland. Last week on National Park After Dark, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, two young British climbers, were high on the remote west face of Ciula Grande in Peru, attempting a route that had never been climbed before. After days of effort at extreme altitude, they reached the summit only for it to turn immediately into worsening weather as they began their descent. Snow moved in quickly, visibly collapsed into a whiteout, and the face beneath them became unstable and dangerous. As they worked their way down, Joe slipped and fell, shattering his leg and leaving him unable to descend on his own. Stranded high on the mountain, with daylight fading and no realistic possibility of rescue, Simon made the decision to lower Joe down the face one rope length at a time, anchoring himself in the snow and absorbing his partner's full weight.

For hours, the system worked. Even as the cold deepened, their hands went numb and exhaustion set in. Then, Joe was lowered over an unseen overhang and left hanging in space above a crevasse, unable to find footing or climb back up. Above him, Simon waited in a collapsing snow seat, the rope cutting into his harness, his strength draining as the storm pressed in and night fell. With no way to communicate and no solution left that would save them both, Simon cut the rope. Joe vanished into the darkness.

There was no sound, no movement, no sign of life. Believing his partner was dead, Simon was left alone on the mountain, still high on the face, with the weather deteriorating, his hands numb, his strength failing, and no clear way down. Little did Simon know, Joe had survived the fall. This is where we pick the story back up. Welcome to National Park After Dark. Hello everyone. Welcome back to part two. Hi, sorry to keep you waiting. Yeah, I've been waiting about two hours, so I'm good.

Everyone else? It's been a week. Unless I was kind and let Patreon members here early, which is to be foreseen. Or if you just are listening to this after they've both been released, then all of this is no one void. Yeah, so smart. Didn't have to wait at all. I like the suspense, though. You know, when you have a TV show that you watch every Tuesday?

night or something and they always leave you on a cliffhanger but then you get there the next week and you're ready. I like that. Yeah, me too. I think the only show that in recent memory that has done that is like Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, um, the last of us. But all of those it's like not only are we going to make you wait a week between episodes, we're going to make you wait five years between seasons. Yeah, that makes it tough. So they're losing me. Which affair. It's been years. I'm aging.

Forget what happened. Yeah. I'm going to have to rewatch these if you're going to wait five years. I don't remember anything that happened. I don't believe. And they keep announcing the spinoffs. I'm like, hold on. Stop.

It's like we're not done. I did get into Game of Thrones, but I remember I religiously watched Suns of Anarchy every Tuesday. Every Tuesday night. It was my college thing. And the first season of American Horror Story. Those were my two. It was Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I remember in college.

American Horror Story was the best. The first like two or three seasons, especially because it came out in college and it was just so, I don't want to say unique, but there was nothing like it as far as, you know, that type of vibe. And it was great. All your friends would get together and watch it. Yeah. It was awesome. Yeah. It also lost me.

I couldn't do the circus. season. Honestly, I didn't get very, I do. I watch bits and pieces of it, but honestly, what got me was I watched the first season of American Horror Story, and I didn't realize that it was going to be a different storyline every single season. So when it didn't pick back up in the same even vein, I know that they couldn't really continue the series after the last episode of the first season, which I won't give away, even though it's been years if you haven't watched it. Spend like over 10 years.

Get with it. Yeah. Get with it. But I still won't spoil it for you. But then it picked up another season and I was like, wait a second. This isn't even the same storyline. And I just couldn't. And for me, for some reason, I just, I was so attached to the first storyline that I just

kind of fell off. And I watched, what was it, the covenant? The coven. The coven. Or coven, period. Just coven. Just coven. I watched that one.

Okay. Because I was years later. But outside of that, it got me. It scared me. I feel like I loved the first one. I think that goes about saying, I feel like that might be people's favorite. But they just kind of got progressively more gory. Yes.

They're too scary for me, honestly. But there's a difference between scary, psychological scary, suspense scary, mind fuck scary versus slasher blood gut. but's visual scary. And I don't like that. They kind of combined all of them, though, because it is suspenseful scary, but it also is slashery scary too. Even in the first one? Not the first one. I liked the first one. Roanoke was rough. I remember Roanoke being like that. I'm like, okay. I just, I need to draw the line. Yeah. And then Kim Kardashian was in one of them. I haven't seen that episode, but I've seen like little spoilers. Wait, a whole season, I think. Oh, she was in an entire season. For some reason, I thought it was an episode.

No, I think she did a whole season. My favorite favorite is Hotel and then the first season because Hotel was Lady Gaga and I loved that season. Never watched that one either. All right, this is not American Horror Story podcast. It is a podcast. I know you guys are waiting to hear what happened. Get on with it. They're like, we don't care about American Horror Story. Tell me what happened to Joe and Simon. I need to know, rightfully so. So let's hop into it. Right back where we left off, when the rope was cut, Joe dropped instantly. His body plunged through darkness with no sense of distance or direction. The air tearing past him as the walls of the corvass flashed by in fragments of shadows and ice. He fell for what felt like an eternity, but was likely only seconds before he slammed

violently onto a sloping edge. The impact knocked the breath from his lungs and sent a wave of fresh pain through his shattered leg. For a moment, he couldn't breathe at all. His chest locked in shock, his vision swimming as he laid stunned against the ice. When breath finally rushed back into his lungs, he realized with disbelief that he was still alive. His head throbbed, his knee screamed, and his body shook uncontrollably, but he had not fallen into the bottomless void he had imagined. He lay there in the dim light of his headlamp, afraid to move, afraid that any shift of weight might send him sliding again into the depths below. Slowly, carefully, he began to feel around his surroundings, discovering that one side

of the ledge was bounded by a sheer ice wall, while the other dropped away sharply into open space. As the shock faded, another realization set in. The rope was no longer attached to him. He fumbled upward with his light, tracing the line of the crevasse until he found the severed end of the rope lying near him. Its fibers freed cleanly. There was no mistaking what had happened. Simon had very clearly cut the rope. Joe screamed into the crevasse, his voice ricocheting uselessly off the icy walls.

Then he collapsed into sobs as the reality of his isolation closed in on him. Above, Simon laid, sprawled in the snow, stared at him. wearing at the end of the rope in his hands, his mind oscillating between certainty and denial. He didn't know Simon was alive, nor could he hear his screams. He forced himself to move, digging a shallow hole in the snow where he could shelter for the night. His body racked with exhaustion and thirst. As darkness settled in, he replayed the moment again and again, wondering whether Joe could somehow have survived the fall, whether there was any chance at all that he was still alive.

Snow melted in his mouth, provided little relief from the dryness swelling his tongue, and sleep hardly came to him that night. So good, so good. Everything you want for summer is at Nordstrom rack stores now and up to 60% off. Stock up and save on the brands you love like Vince, Sam Edelman, Frame, and Free People. Join the Nordi Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices.

that's why you rack. Morning brought calm weather in a clear sky. A huge contrast to the night before. Simon packed his gear and began descending, his movement stiff and mechanical as he navigated the slopes below. When he reached the section of mountain where Joe had gone over the overhang, he approached it cautiously from the side and finally saw the true shape of the terrain. The overhang dropped directly into a massive crevasse beneath the slope.

standing there, staring into the darkness below, Simon understood instantly what had happened and why Joe had never been able to take the way off the rope. He shouted Joe's name into the void, but heard no response. And I can just imagine that moment looking at it because when he cut the rope, he had no idea what was happening on the other end. It was a whiteout. He couldn't move to check because he was being dragged in. And now just to see this massive crevasse that he dropped his friend into. also seeing the magnitude of, oh, this is why he didn't respond to me pulling the rope, to do the changing of the ropes every single time that they found a spot. And it was just, I can imagine that moment of being like, oh, my God.

Yeah. About as heavy as it gets. Yeah. Convinced that Joe could not have survived the fall, Simon continued his descent alone. As he crossed the glacier below, the enormity of what had happened began. to settle over him more fully. He thought about Richard waiting at the base camp and about what he would say when he arrived. He considered lying, telling a version of the story that left out the knife and the rope, a version that might be easier for others to accept. But the thought passed replaced by a numb

resignation and the singular focus on getting off the mountain alive. I can't say that I wouldn't have that same thought too because it's like there's two of us we only the two of us only know what happened and how am I going to tell people what I did? So you're saying that if you cut me off of a rope, you would just lie about it? I'm not saying I would. I say understand having that thought of being like how do I admit that I made this decision to the people who loved them most? Like if I had to make that decision and then I had to call your mom and tell her that, I think there would be a split second of me that would be like, I could lie and say that they saved me, that they died like a valiant debt. Like you died saving me or, you know, just something to make it feel less awful. More palatable. Yeah. But also deflecting off of you. And I'm not saying I would do that. I just understand having that feeling of how do you. how do you truly tell someone why you just did when it? I mean, I feel like that's a pretty human response to have.

I feel like everyone, all the possibilities are going to flash through your mind at a point in time like that in such a high stress and, oh my God, moment of what just happened. But yeah, that's a hard lie to keep up for the rest of your life. Like if you commit to that, you got to commit to that version forever. Yeah, forever. because people are going to ask you, especially since you were with someone trying to conquer a mountain that no one else had ever done before. No one's going to be like, oh, accidents happen. People are going to question what you were doing there and what went wrong.

This reminds me of the bonus episode I did in, was it in Peru as well, about all the climbers and then we don't know if they were murdered or not because the surviving climbers on Concora or something like that. I swear I did it. It was just, I was living in Colorado. Again, I remember where I was when I research and write these things. But it was in, I believe it was in Peru. And there's this whole inquest into what the hell happened because essentially this group of climbers. There's five of them, I think. There's one woman and the rest of them were men.

They went up this mountain and something went wrong. I think two of them died. And the survivors came down with a version of events that had been accepted or was accepted for decades. And then it starts to come out that, okay, not only are their belongings starting to be found by present day climbers because the glaciers are melting and there's photographic evidence of things that are happening and their bodies were discovered that had some evidence of maybe another story unfolding. Some foul play. Yeah. Yeah. That was an interesting episode. It does, I feel it does feel reminiscent if we went down. Right. If we're going down that.

Yeah, it's like you have to commit to that and pray that no one's going to question it. And no one's going to find out what really happened. Right. But he didn't do that. He doesn't do that. But he had a split moment where he thought about it. And then I think in that moment he was like, you know what, I can't even think about that right now. I need to survive. to even get to a place where I can tell anyone what happened up here. Well, down in the crevasse, Joe lay on the ledge for a long time, crying, shouting, and then falling silent as the cold seeped into his body. Eventually, exhaustion overtook panic, and he drifted into an uneasy sleep. When he woke, pale light filtered down from far above, illuminating the ice walls around him.

He knew Simon would have descended by now and that no rescue was coming for him. He was alone, injured, without food or water, trapped inside the mountain. Instinctively, Joe tried to climb upward towards the light, driving his axes into the ice and pulling himself higher. But each attempt ended the same way, with his strength failing and his body crashing back down onto the ledge, sending bolts of pain through his leg. Because I always just keep thinking you're just carrying dead weight, essentially, with your leg that can't move or do anything. So you're on one leg, you have two arms and climbers are so strong. And this is why you have to be in such a good shape if you ever are missing a limb to use. But I'm just imagining him trying to climb and he has one leg to climb with and all of his upper body strength.

And he's tired. He's injured. He just fell hundreds of feet. And he's still trying to, he's still using all of his effort and his exertion to try and get out of this. Well, he also, yeah, his leg is a Z as we discussed. A shape that no leg should ever be in. Right. Well, after several attempts, he understood that climbing out that way was impossible.

If he stayed where he was, he also realized that he would certainly die. With no options left, Joe anchored himself to the ice wall and prepared to descend deeper into the crevasse, choosing movement and uncertainty over waiting to freeze or starve to death on the ledge. It's like, well, if I can't climb out, maybe there's something even further into the mountain. that can help me. He knew that if there was no way out below, the rope would eventually run out and he would fall, but the alternative was certain death. At least, this option offered a little bit of hope. Tightening his grip and steadying his breath, he began lowering himself into the darkness, not knowing what weighted beneath. Lowering himself into the crevasse, Joe moved slowly and

deliberately, his body trembling with exhaustion as he fed the rope through his device, unable to see more than a short distance ahead in the beam of his headlamp. The walls narrowed and widened unpredictably. Their surfaces, like with ice, and the darkness below, seemed endless. He knew there was no guarantee that the rope would reach anything solid, and he made the conscious decision not to tie a knot at the end. If there was no way out, he would fall off the rope, and at least the end would be quick. Maybe. He already fell and survived. Yeah. It's a big. It's a big. It's a big. question mark. I mean, I don't know if it would have been quick, but. The motivation I would have to be holding onto that rope.

Yeah. With everything I had to not tie a knot at the end of that. And I'm assuming he looked down with his headlamp and was just like, the end is nowhere in sight, so I'm just going to fall where I fall. Yeah. After descending, roughly 50 feet, his legs suddenly dropped through open space and he found. himself hanging vertically in the void. His heart surged with panic as he continued downward until, without warning, his feet struck something solid. He screamed with relief when he realized there was a floor beneath him, a sloping surface covered in snow about 15 feet below the rope. The sense of victory was brief, however, because as he shifted his weight, he realized the floor was not the bottom of

the crevasse, but a suspended ceiling, a fragile bridge separating the upper section from a far deeper abyss below. Still, it was enough. He tested the snow carefully, inch by inch, and when it held, he began crawling across the ceiling towards a faint glow, filtering in from one side. That light marked a slope rising towards a hole in the roof of the crevasse, an opening that represented his only possible escape. Under normal conditions, climbing the rope would have taken minutes, but with one functional leg and arms numb by cold in fatigue, The ascent became an ordeal that stretched on for hours. Joe worked methodically, dragging himself in a short, painful movements, using his ice axe and his left leg to inch higher, while his injured right leg trailed uselessly behind him.

Each time he shifted his weight, a jolt of agony shot through his body, and more than once, he nearly fainted. He rested whenever he could, clinging to the slope and forcing himself to breathe, then continued, repeating the same moment. motions again and again until they became automatic. Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, his head broke through the opening and into daylight. The sudden brightness made him squint as cold air rushed across his face. Above him, the sky was clear and impossibly blue, and beyond the lip of the crevasse, the mountain stretched out in sharp white ridges gleaming in the sun. Joe pulled himself fully out of the snow and lay there, shaking and laughing weakly, overwhelmed by the fact that he was a and back on top of the glaciated surface instead of inside of it.

I can relate to that laugh. It's like, my life, what's happening? I laugh all the time in situations where it does not warrant a chuckle, but I just can't help it. Not laughing because it's funny. It's just overwhelming nerve-wracking. I can't believe this is life right now. Yeah, disbelief. is a big one. I laugh a lot at that. And I can just imagine that, I don't know. Okay, well, I'll hold this

question until you're done because you're probably going to answer it. But I just feel like the amount of release that your body has in a moment like that while letting out a laugh like that, it scares me because we hear a lot of the, when your body starts to crash when you feel safety. Yes. The adrenaline kind of fades away in your body. He's like, I'm safe, so it shuts down. Whereas before it's in this fight mode. Not that he's safe. I mean, he's not out of the woods.

He's certainly not safe. He's just not inside a crevasse anymore. He's still on top of a very glaciated mountain with so many more crevasses that he can fall into. So he's definitely not safe, but he is no longer inside the mountain, which is a plus. It is a plus. I was just imagining him. Have you ever done a zombie crawl before? like a workout for workout?

Like, I don't think so. I'm picturing, I'm picturing like Iron Man or the 5Ks where you army crawl underneath the barbed wire. But I'm guessing that that's not what a zombie crawl is. It's very similar. It's very similar. So I've done stuff like that. Yeah, I've taken, there's a boot camp class I used to take. And there's like these zombie crawls where it's very similar to an army crawl.

But instead of like shuffling your legs along with your arms. arms as you're on the ground, you don't use anything but your arms. So the rest of your body is dead weight and you're just using your forearms to pull you forward on the ground. Oh, interesting. And it's so hard. It sounds hard. And I do it now in hot Pilates, but they have you put the bottom of your feet on these sliders so that you can like kind of slide on the ground. Anyway, I just kind of was thinking while you were describing him crawling across that ceiling portion of just not being able to utilize his leg and just kind of shuffling all his weight after all that he's already just gone through.

It's like the upper body strength to be able to do all of this. Yeah, it's incredible. It really is. Yeah. Girl, winter is so last season. And now Springs got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders.

That perfect hang on the patio sundress. Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear up on that envelope. It's time for a little in-person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. Well, he's laughing because he's free but not safe.

But the relief that he was feeling in that moment, pretty quickly as he realized exactly the situation he was in. He was still badly injured. He was alone. He was miles from camp. He still had no food and no water. And he had no idea how long it would take him to get down or whether he could survive the journey at all. But lying still was no longer an option. And with the warmth of the sun softening the snow, he began to move. At first he tried hopping, but the pain was unbearable and quickly drained what little strength he had left. After experimenting, he found that the most effective method was to lie on his left side and propel himself downward, using his axis to pull and push while flicking his good leg for momentum. Progress was

slow and awkward, but it allowed him to move without placing weight on his shattered knee. As he crawled, his awareness came and went in waves. At times, he was intensely focused on the mechanics of movements, and at others, his mind drifted into a hazy, detached state. When he looked up and saw a length of climbing rope stretched across the snow ahead of him, it took a moment for him to register what he was seeing. Then he understood that the rope he was seeing was actually Simon's rope that he had left behind when he continued down the mountain before he was leaving Joe for probably what he thought for dead. The sight was both devastating and clarifying. First, no one was coming back for him because the rope was going in the other direction. But also, it was kind of exciting because it meant he was

going in the correct direction. If he was going to survive, though, he realized now, for sure, it was entirely on his own and that Simon wasn't waiting around looking for him. Joe continued dragging himself forward. His memory becoming unreliable as exhaustion deepened. Sections of terrain seemed to disappear from his recollection entirely as if he had crossed them without actually being present. He thought often of his mother and hoped that she was praying for him. As another storm approached and darkness began to fall, he fought against the overwhelming desire to sleep, knowing that giving in could mean never waking up again. Eventually, though, he could go no farther. He dug a shallow hole in the snow and crawled into it, curling his body

around his injured leg the best he could. He had not had food or water in days, and his mouth was painfully dry. He chewed on snow to ease the thirst, though it did little to help. When sleep finally did come, it was shallow and filled with vivid, confusing dreams that bled into his waking moments. When he awoke screaming, disoriented, and panic, he had to remind himself that he was no longer trapped in the crevasse. His body ached and the reality of his condition consumed him again. He knew he had to keep moving no matter how slowly because stopping meant dying where he laid. When Joe began moving again, time lost all reliable meaning. He was no longer measuring progress in distance, but an effort, and whether he could force his body to complete one more movement

without collapsing entirely. The glacier ahead of him was a maze of crevasses and broken ice, and from his low vantage point, because remember he's crawling, it was difficult to see more than a few yards in any direction. Every decision about where to go required him to stop, gather himself, and sometimes painfully haul his body upright just long enough to orient himself before dropping back down to continue crawling. How old is he at this right now in this story? He's in his 20s, I believe. That's what I thought.

Yeah. Not long after setting off, he noticed footprints crossing the glacier ahead. At first, he thought they might be his own, but as he followed them, he realized they belonged to Simon. The tracks zigzagged across the ice weaving around hidden crevasses and unstable bridges, and Joe understood immediately how valuable these actually were. From the ground, he could not easily see the terrain, but Simon's path gave him a guide through everything, because of course Simon is going to be walking on the safe portions. So he's like, okay, I can follow these.

And instead of having to stand up every few minutes to look for a hidden crevasse over the other side, I know that wherever Simon is walking is probably safe. So he just starts following those instead. During this, Joe's consciousness drifted in and out as he crawled. At times, he felt as though he was watching himself from a daze. distance, his body moving automatically while his mind floated elsewhere. His memory became unreliable. Ridges appeared and vanished without him recalling how he had crossed them. The effort of movement consumed nearly all of his attention, and when pain surged through his leg, it did so in wave so intense that they briefly overshone everything else. He couldn't focus on anything except for that pain.

As the day wore on, the thirst became overwhelming. He had not had water for days. and his mouth felt coated in a thick, chalky dryness that made swallowing painful. He sucked snow whenever he could, knowing it was a poor substitute for liquid, but unable to stop himself. His body craved water with a desperation that bordered on obsession, and thoughts of it crowded out almost everything else. As evening approach, a storm began to roll in. Fresh snow started falling, and panic rose in Joe's chest as he realized that Simon's footprints were fading beneath it. He pushed himself harder, afraid that once the tracks disappeared, he would be lost on the glacier with no reliable way to navigate. Darkness closed in and his movements became slower and less coordinated as exhaustion deepened.

Eventually, he was forced to stop. He found a snowbank and dug another shallow shelter crawling inside just as the light of day faded. When morning came, the storm had erased the tracks completely. Joe was alone with the glacier, surrounded by a confusing landscape of ice, in snow that looked entirely unfamiliar without the guiding line of footprints. His progress became erratic as he doubled back repeatedly, struggling to avoid crevasses that appeared suddenly beneath him. Several times he had to stand, gritting his teeth against the pain just to look ahead and plan a safe route forward. After hours of crawling, he finally

reached the edge of the glacier and found himself staring down at a field of rocks and boulders below. The realization that the glacier had been the easiest part of his journey filled him with dread because now he had to drag his body through a boulder field. Oh, God. It just keeps getting worse, huh? He's getting worse. And throughout this, he has, and he talks about this, he actually experiences the third man factor. I was just going to ask you that. Yes.

So throughout this journey, he's had this voice. in his head that's like, don't go to sleep, keep going, keep moving. That's telling him. But when he gets to this point, he starts hearing the voice even louder. This internal voice had begun guiding him earlier, was now firm and insistent telling him exactly what he needed to do next. He removed unnecessary items from his pack, according to the voice, was telling him to, and arranged them carefully on the ice, then cut his foam sleeping mat, half and wrapped it around his shattered knee, securing it with a strap from his crampons to form a splint. And that kind of reminded me of our class we took. Yeah. Yeah, we practiced doing that.

We did. I was like, that's a good idea. We practiced splinting a broken leg in a sleeping pad. And this is what this voice was telling him. He heard, okay, you got to get across this boulder field, wrap your leg, keep moving. And if you have no idea what we're referring to with the third man factor, I covered an episode on it and I titled it Spirit or Science, the Third Man Factor. Couldn't tell you what episode number it was, but if you look that up, it'll pop up. It's one of my favorite topics I've researched for the show. It's so intriguing. Yeah.

Yeah. And we've gotten a bunch of trail tales and stuff from people who have experienced the Third Man Factor since and it's kind of become a recurring theme on the show. But rightfully so, because people. who are in these life or death situations often report that phenomenon. So it's so funny you bring that up because I was wondering, as you were saying, when you first started mentioning, he was kind of coming in and out of consciousness and he was kind of, it's starting to waver. I was wondering if that was going to make an appearance.

If his guiding voice was going to show up. And it had been. But this was the first time I'm kind of mentioning it because it was at this point, it was like, all right, you got to do that. because there was a moment here where he saw it and was like, wait, that was the easy part. Now I have to go through all of this. And it was this extra voice in his head that was pushing him to move forward. Ready to soundtrack your summer? With Red Bull Summer All Day Play, you choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, a deep end DJ, a road dog, or a trail mixer? Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play, Red Bull gives you wings. Visit Red Bull.com slash bright summer ahead to learn more.

See you this summer. As the hours passed, his thoughts grew increasingly fragmented. Snatches of memories, songs, and conversations replayed in his mind without order. Time stretched and compressed unpredictably as he struggled to tell whether minutes or hours had passed between rest. When he finally reached running water, he collapsed beside it and drank greedily, pressing his mouth against the rock face and sucking at the cold stream until his stomach cramped. The water was gritty and unpleasant, but it was life itself, and he could feel the strength returning with every swallow. He continued onward as darkness fell again, driven by the fear that base camp might already

have been abandoned. His movements slowed to a crawl, and he fell frequently, sometimes lying still for long moments before forcing himself to rise again. As darkness settled over the valley, Joe climbed a low ridge and sensed that he was close. He could not see the camp, but the landscape felt familiar, and he called out, forcing the sound from his chest despite the weakness in his body. When there was no response, despair washed over him and he collapsed, convinced he had arrived too late. But again, he mustered the strength and started yelling. Down near the camp, Simon heard his yelling and froze. For a moment, he could not place it or reconcile what he was hearing. with what he believed to be true.

The idea that he was hearing Joe, and he could still be alive, had already been set aside. Then the shout came again, and Simon responded instinctively, calling out as he moved towards the sound, his headlamp sweeping across the uneven ground ahead as he moved as quickly as he could towards the sounds. When Simon reached Joe, there was no rush of relief or emotional release

that his friend was alive. There was no time spent processing the impossibility of what he was seeing. His mind did not linger on the fact that the man he believed dead was right in front of him and also the man he thought he killed. There was no space for that because he saw that Joe was breathing. He was upright. He was alive and his first instinct was to act. He grabbed Joe and began guiding him forward, focused on only keeping him on his feet and getting him back to the tent. Inside the shelter, Simon shifted seamlessly into motion. He poured tea and urged Joe to drink it, watching carefully as he swallowed. He cut away Joe's trousers without hesitation, exposing the knee

beneath, grotesquely swollen and discolored, the joint barely recognizable. The sight was appalling, but Simon did not react outwardly. He remained practical and deliberate, moving from one task to the next, as though emotion had been completely set aside until Joe was safe enough for it to return. I would rather draw comfort and reassurance through watching somebody do what needs to be done to take care of the situation versus talking about the situation. And it feels like he has got that covered. Yeah. And I mean, in a moment that feels like it would be so emotional. You know, you saw, you're seeing your friend for the first time who you thought was dead. It's days later. He's alive. He's moving towards you. You can grab him. I mean, you would think that it would be this emotion-filled moment, which, you know, which I'm sure in parts it was. But at the same time, you're like, he's alive, I need to help. And let's keep him alive. And let's keep him alive.

That's his first instinct is, we have time later to hash out whatever that was that happened back there. But right now, you're alive. And we need to get you to safety. It was only when Joe finally spoke that something changed. His voice was weak, but his words were very clear. The first thing he told Simon was that cutting the rope had been the right decision. that he would have done the same exact thing if it was him in that situation.

Oh, my God. I don't know why. But that just got me so sad, like, emotional. I could cry right now with that. I mean, because you know in all this time, you know that he's carrying that guilt. And then you have also been racking with this. He cut the rope. I have been struggling for days to die. And just being like, you made the right call. We're both alive right now because you did that. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And for Simon, that weight he had been carrying since that moment on the mountain shifted and only then did the magnitude of what had happened really begin to press in. Well, because that by him saying you made the right decision is the same thing as saying, I forgive you. Yeah. And that is just so monumental, you know, on both sides. And Joe had been alone for days by the time. he staggered back onto the glacier and began making his way towards base camp.

And Simon Richard had been originally preparing to leave the base camp only a few hours later before Joe had arrived. So they were getting ready for the night. They were planning to leave early the next morning and head out. They had kind of given up. Joe was kind of not a lost cause, but he was not an afterthought either. That's a bad way of saying it. But they had just realized it was time to go. They had accepted the same.

situation for what they believed it to be. Yeah. And Joe kept having this reoccurring thought of keep moving. You got to get there. If they leave camp, that's it for you. You got to go. And the fact that he was pushing himself and pushing himself to move if he had only been a couple hours shy of or later than that, then he might not have come across them at all. With Joe alive, but clearly deteriorating urgency replaced exhaustion. The immediate danger of the mountain had passed, but the reality of Joe's injuries and dehydration introduced a new threat. His knee was massively swollen, his body weakened, and he could barely stay upright without assistance. Simon understood that rest alone would not save him. Joe needed to get off the mountain

and into medical care as quickly as possible. The following morning, Simon arranged for a mule to carry Joe to the nearest village. Richard took care of what remained at base camp, sorting gear, rationing supplies and helping arrange the next steps. Joe's body, which had functioned on sheer will for days, began to fail once the struggle was over. Exactly how you were talking about before. When the mule arrived, Joe could not brace himself properly on the animal and was slipping along the rough trail. Simon stayed close, steadying him whenever he could, refusing to let him stop even when Joe begged to rest. The nearest hospital was days away, and Simon knew that a delay could be fatal for him. From the village, they managed to secure transport farther down the valley, eventually

reaching Lima after a grueling journey that combined mule trails and the back of a truck. By the time Joe arrived at the hospital, he was barely conscious. He had lost more than 40 pounds, nearly a third of his body weight, and was suffering from severe dehydration, frostbite, and catastrophic damage to his knee. The hospital conditions were stark, and Joe waited days before receiving surgery as insurance details were sorted. When doctors, I know, it's like, who cares? I'm sorry. It's so true, though.

Like, come on, I've been on a mountain for days. I'm finally somewhere where I can be helped. It's like, we're just trying to figure out your co-pay, though, or whatever that, I don't know, whatever details. It's like, can you pay us, though? Oh, my God. Just help me. Help me.

I'll pay. Have you ever heard of GoFund me? Everyone can pay now. Just fucking do it. It just do it. Guys on death's doorstep and they're figuring out what to do with insurance. That's not a unique situation, unfortunately, but a frustrating one. The bright side is at least he's hooked up to IVs and pain medication now.

So at least he's more comfortable, but he is waiting longer. You guys know that I love a fun fact. I love learning. So I want to teach you something really quick because I had no idea this existed. Have you heard of the Slayer rules? a.k.a. the Slayer statutes. These are legal provisions that prevent people from inheriting property or benefiting from the estate of a person they murdered. One of the things they protect is someone getting killed for their life insurance policy. Makes you realize how valuable life insurance is,

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and a licensed insurance agent will call you right away with the right policy for your life and your budget. Life insurance is never cheaper than it is today. Get the right life insurance for you, for less, and save more than 50% at selectquote.com.com slash NPAD. Save more than 50% on term life insurance at selectcote.com slash NPAD today to get started. That's selectquote.com slash NPAD. When the doctors finally operated, they confirmed the extent of the injury. The fall had driven the bones of his lower leg up through the knee joint, crushing it beyond what most surgeons believed could be repaired. Joe was told repeatedly that he would never walk normally again, let alone climb.

Over the next several years, he endured six operations and a long, painful rehabilitation that required months in casts and on crutches. Despite those predictions, Joe eventually, returned to the mountains. His knee remained damaged and painful, but he refused to accept the limits placed on him. Within two years, he was climbing again. Later, tackling roots in the Caracorum and the Himalayas. He continued climbing until 2009 when the accumulated damage finally made it impossible for him to continue. And as he later put it, the cost of his earlier climbs had eventually come due. Simon also continued climbing, undertaking major expeditions across the world from Greenland and Alaska to the Himalayas in South America. The events in Peru did not end his career, but they followed him nonetheless.

Public reaction to his decision to cut the rope was often harsh, particularly after the story became widely known. Many people judged the decision without understanding the reality of the situation or the physical limits involved. Joe never joined in on that judgment. from the very beginning, he maintained that Simon had done the only thing he could have done and that if that rope had not been cut, both of them would have died. Joe eventually wrote about the climb in his book, Touching the Void, completing the first draft in just a few weeks. Oh, my God. That hits hard right now.

I mean, when it's your own story to tell? Yeah. And there's no research involved, really? You know everything. Right. That is fucking impressive. That is the most impressive part of this entire story. That's all I'm going to say on that for now.

Well, when he wrote this book, he did not expect it to reach a wide audience, but it went on to sell more than a million copies and became one of the most influential mountaineering narratives ever written. A documentary adaptation followed in 2003, bringing the story. story to an even larger audience and cementing its place in climbing history. Did they go their separate ways after this? Yes. Okay. So that is actually what I was going to get into next. So they shoot this movie and basically what happened with this movie that was filmed in 2003 and they had to redo.

Simon had basically the spotlight was on time and again where all these conversations started again of if what he did was right. if it was wrong and he was under a lot of scrutiny again. So I think that that brought up a lot of past traumas as well. But also after this whole escapade, they never returned to a full friendship. There wasn't a dramatic falling out and there was no public display of we're ending a friendship or anything like that. It seems like they just gradually moved in different directions after that. And I don't know if some of it was because of the scrutiny that was happening and there

was a lot of publicity around the book and the movie and maybe that was too much. But it seems like there was no, there was no malice behind it. It was just kind of friends, friends kind of part ways sometimes. After Joe stepped away from climbing, he turned to writing and speaking, using his experience to examine risk, endurance, and the psychological aftermath of survival. He has been open about how close he came to dying and about how that knowledge reshaped his life. The story of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates did not mark the end of climbing on Ceola Grande. If anything, it ensured the mountain would never be forgotten. Their experience made widely known through his book Touching the Void and the documentary became required reading for generations of alpineus,

not as a cautionary tale meant to scare climbers away, but as a look at what commitment in the high mountains truly demands of people. In the decades that followed, elite climbers continued to return there not to repeat the west face, but to seek out new challenges on its other sides. The mountains complex structure, steep faces, and constantly shifting glaciers offered lines that had never been climbed, which attracted more climbers around the world. As recently as 2022, world-class alpinists were still establishing first descents on the mountains, east face, carving new lines into terrain considered among the most difficult in the entire region. These modern climbs were not attempts to redo the past, but to push the limits of technical alpineism even further,

using lighter gear, refined techniques, and decades of accumulated experience. The conditions remain unforgiving. Whether windows are short, glacial terrain is unstable, and the roots can change from season to season. But for elite climbers, that uncertainty is part of the draw. In that way, Joe and Simon's expedition did more than survive the mountain. It helped define what it means to confront it, inspiring new generations to test themselves against the same unforgiving walls, now fully aware of the risks and possibilities up there. And that is my story of Simon and Joe. Wow. That is truly unforgettable. I'll remember that story forever, hopefully. God, it's just so, yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing it with us because it's been a long time coming. And it was,

it was just as hardcore as people amped it up to be when they were recommending it. For sure. And I think that it certainly brings a question of what would you do in this situation, would you cut the rope? And I think my takeaway from this story is that if we were ever in a situation, which I know we won't be because we don't do this, but if for some reason we were, I would want you to cut the rope. Okay. Just because there's no reason for us. both to die, you know, if there is a way out of it and one is certainly we both die, cut the rope. Yeah.

Save yourself. Come up with a really cool story of how I saved you. Go on without me. Actually tell people I cut the rope. Oh, like a self-sacrifice type of thing. Well, this, it kind of reminds me when you're talking about that of how Simon was getting a lot of flack for that decision. from the general public. It just always, it's just so reminiscent and it's so familiar to people who are interested

in these types of stories, whether they be lost at sea or stranded somewhere or, you know, have this dire situation on a mountain somewhere. And there's just different rules that apply in different situations like this that make sense and are understood by everyone involved in those particular situations, but no one else could really grasp or understand unless you're in them. Just kind of like with the Essex and, you know, the survivors that had to cannibalize their crewmates to survive, you know, they were brought to court about it, you know, and they were like charged with a bunch of, it's like, this is just like, it's not a crime, you know.

Just try and survive. Yeah. And we talked about it in the Donner Party episode two about how there's just, I mean, the decisions need to be made that don't make sense in this, in our day to day lives. And I don't think it's fair to judge people who have to make the worst decisions of their lives. You know, same thing with the plane crash society of the snow. was the newest adaptation of that event in the Andes Mountains with the rugby team crash. And, you know, you think that they wanted to cannibalize their friends and family members? Like, they were in a dire situation. They were strictly trying to survive. It kind of just reminds me of,

you know, when you're watching TV and you're on your couch and you're super cozy. And I don't know, The first thing that comes to mind for me is just when you're watching like naked and afraid and you're super cozy on your couch and you're just like stupid idiot. I never would have done that. Yeah. That's the epitome of this, you know, where like I could have done it better. Meanwhile, you've never done anything even close to that in your entire life. And it's like, I would never. My high horse.

It's just, it's funny because it's easier to cast judgment. I think than it is to really realize the situation in its entirety. And I think it says a lot that Simon agrees that he made the right call. Yeah. That was one of the most – and it was so – we kind of just breezed right on by it. But that really was one of the most powerful moments, I think, in a story that we've shared. That one moment. And it – and I think also because it – there was no fanfare around it.

It wasn't this huge big thing. It was kind of just this private moment. It happened in a couple seconds and just, you know, you made the right choice. I forgive you. You know, it's okay. By him, by Joe offering that information as the first thing he said when he was able to speak was just, I don't know, it was just so moving. And it probably spared Simon a lot of mental torment that he probably would have endured on top of everything else he had. Just because it wound up okay doesn't mean that he doesn't still live with, hey, I made the

decision to end somebody's life. It didn't happen that way. You know, he didn't end up dying. But I still had to consciously decide. Make that choice and go through with it. And like I went through. You know what I mean? So I just like releasing him from that, at least that portion of it and that guilt.

And like, I wonder if he's, you know, going to hold this. against me for the rest of his life type of thing is immediately kind of squashed and taking care of. I mean, I don't know if it's because I'm on the first day of my period right now, but that's hitting me really hard. It's a big moment. It's such a big moment in the story. And I think we all kind of felt just in this story that Simon needed to hear that. Without even knowing that much of Simon's side, it just really felt like.

he needed that. And I think part of why it feels that way, too, is going back and we kind of discussed this in the first part of this episode, is that he went through huge lengths to try and save him after his leg, after his leg was shattered. So to go through all of that and then to still have to cut the rope. And then to make the conscious decision to walk away from that area and leave the mountain without his climbing partner. And then to suddenly hear his voice. And see him alive again days later. I think it was just this moment that we all felt that he needed and the fact that Simon also felt that that needed to be, or Joe also felt like that needed to be said and said it as his first words. I agree with you. It was just this, it was kind of like,

I feel like that whole episode, it was almost like you're holding your breath the whole time. And that was the first moment in the whole story where it felt like you could breathe again. Yeah. That's a good way to put it. Well, is that it? Yeah, welcome to 2026. Oh, I can breathe. Joe survived. All as well.

All as well. Great. Well, yeah, that's it. Thank you guys for listening next week. I am going to, we talked a little bit last episode about episode planning and stuff and like hard hitters and stuff. Yeah, well, next week I'm doing a story that is like everyone is dying to hear. Everyone. Like, if I hear one more email about it.

You never will again. You never. I don't know. People are still like, hey, have you heard about Night of the Grizzlies? That's true. Which we have heard about in case we didn't know. It's episode 17 and 18. And 18.

Yeah. Another two-party. Yeah. So, okay, here's another just, it's 2026. Here's your yearly reminder. You can search for our episodes in like five different ways. And I really encourage you to do that before you send in a suggestion. We love you no matter what. But it would just like help both of us out, you know, like if you really want to hear this and you're suggesting we do it because you really want to hear it covered, you know, we're over 300 episodes in where we may have done it. That's all I'm saying. I'm not trying to get spicy. Spotify and Apple both have a little few. feature on it where you can click on the search bar and you can type in the topic that you're interested in see if we've done it before. But also we have a fun little map on our NPADpodcast.com website where you can actually look at the regions around it's a map and you can click the locations of all the points and see what stories we've covered in those locations as well,

which is really fun. And on that same, very same website, NPADPodcast.com, under our episode tab, there is a catalog of every main episode we've ever done and you can search there. And they're all laid out there for you. Yeah. The more you know. The more you know. Yeah. All right.

Great. I'm not mad. I'm not mad. I'm just. She's just disappointed. I'm just on the first day of my period. I have a lot of things happening. Yeah.

You know, like, we're going to laugh. We're going to. cry and then I'm going to yell at you and then I'm going to eat a snack and then I'm going to cry. I've done it all today. I've done all of those things. So we'll end it with appreciation. We really love you guys.

Thank you for being here. All right, everyone. We'll see you next week. Enjoy the view. But watch you're back. Hi, everyone. See you. Thank you for joining us again this week.

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