Of course, I might just be talking out my arse, because I’ve been asked this question so many times, but I’ve always thought it’s more than just an adventure story. In the summer of 1985, Joe Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, decide to conquer an unclimbed route in the Peruvian Andes. On Desert Island Discs in 2004, you said you never expected to find a life partner, but you’ve since got married to Corrinne . Then I sat back and watched these five-star reviews coming in and thought: “Bloody hell, here we go again…” It’s strange. You think you’ve got some plan for your life and that’s the first thing that goes out the window, isn’t it?

Because the difficult terrain and the poor weather conditions prevented rapid progress with the descent, the pair had to spend a night in a snow hole on the ridge. The system worked; Yates lowered Simpson approximately 3000 feet by this method and the pair felt they were regaining control of the situation estimating that they had almost descended to the relative safety of the glacier. Yates had enough rope to abseil to safety from his snow hole and Simpson had enough rope to get to a point in the crevasse where he could climb out.The film won the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film at the 2003 BAFTA Awards [5] and was featured at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. They remained in this position for some time (Yates estimates in excess of one and a half hours [2]), until it was obvious to Yates that his unbelayed stance, merely a seat dug into the near vertical snow slope without any fixed anchors, was gradually collapsing as he began to be pulled downwards in 'small jerky steps'. Joe discovers that the rope has been cut and that he must make it down the mountain by himself to survive.

Therefore, his only choice was to abseil deeper into the crevasse and hope that there was another way out.Exhausted and suffering from hypothermia and frostbite, Yates dug himself a snow cave to wait out the storm.