Touching the Void Read Online Free Page A

axes up the ice, bunny-hopping his feet, then axes in again. I ducked from the cold shower, looking away to the south at the sky lightening by the minute above the summit of Sarapo.
    When I next looked up Simon was nearly at the end of the rope, 150 feet above me. I had to crane my neck to see him. It was very steep.
    Following his cheery shout I sorted out my axes, checked my crampons, and started up towards the wall. As I reached the crevasse I realised how precipitously steep it was. I felt off balance, forced out by the angle, until I had hauled myself out over the lip of the crevasse and up on to the ice wall. Stiff and uncoordinated at first, I struggled unnecessarily until, warmed by the effort, my body began to flow into rhythmic movements, and a rush of exultation at being here set me off up towards the distant figure.
    Simon stood on the outside of one foot, hanging back on the ice screws hammered into the ice, casual, relaxed:
    ‘Steep, isn’t it?’
    ‘Almost vertical, that bit at the bottom,’ I replied, ‘but the ice is brilliant! I’ll bet this is steeper than the Droites.’
    Simon gave me the remaining screws and I carried on above him, sweating now, the morning cold driven off. Head down, keep looking at your feet, swing, swing, hop, look at your feet, swing swing…all the way up a smooth 150 feet, no effort, no headache, feeling on top of the world. I drove in the screws, seeing the ice crack, split and protest—drive in, solid, clip in, lean back, relax. This was it!
    I felt the flow, the heat and blood and strength flowing. It was right. ‘Yeeee haaaaaaaa!’—listen to that echo, round and round the glacier. Thin wandering footprints, shadow lines, could be seen twisting up from the darker shadow of the collapsed snow hole on the glacier, already a long way down.
    Simon was coming up, hitting hard, ice splintering down below him, hitting hard and strong, walking up on points of steel, head down, hitting, hopping, on past me and up, without a word, just hitting hard, breathing steady, getting smaller.
    We climbed higher, 1,000 feet, 2,000, until we wondered when this icefield would end, and the rhythm became ragged with the monotony. We kept looking up and to our right, following the line we had chosen—a line that now looked different with the shortened perspective. The rock buttress swept up beside us into tangled gullies. Ribboned snow on the ledges, ice weeps and icicles everywhere, but where was the gully we wanted?
    The sun was fully up; jackets and tops were in the sacks. Following Simon, I was slowing with the heat, dry-mouthed, wanting a drink. The angle eased. Looking to my right, I smiled seeing Simon with legs astride a large rock, sack off, taking a photograph of me as I came over the top edge of the icefield and headed towards him on an easy ramp line.
    ‘Lunch,’ he said, passing me a chocolate bar and some prunes. The gas stove hissed away busily, sheltered by his rucksack. ‘The brew’s nearly ready.’
    I sat back, glad to rest in the sun and look around. It was past noon, and warm. Ice clattered down from the headwall which reared 2,000 feet above us. For the moment we were safe. The rock on which we lunched topped a slight rib, splitting the ground above the icefield so that the debris tumbled harmlessly past on either side. We sat, perched above the icefield, which was steeply sloped, dropping like a vertical wall beneath our lunch rock. A giddy, dragging sensation urged me to lean further out over the drop, pulling me down at the snow-ice sweeping away below. Looming over, with my stomach clenched, and a sharp strong sense of danger, I enjoyed the feeling. Our footsteps and the snow hole were no longer visible, lost in the dazzling blur of white ice and white glacier. With the wind tonight all signs of our passing would be gone.
    The upper tiers of the great yellow rock buttress which split the face crowded out our view of the way ahead. As we climbed up parallel with