Dark Shadows Falling

by Joe Simpson

* Concise, objective account of the 1996 Everest debacle

* One of Simpson's most controversial and challenging books

* Short listed for the 1997 Boardman Tasker Award



In 1992, an Indian climber was left to die alone high on the South Col of Mount Everest by other climbers who watched his feebly waving hand from the security of their tent thirty yards away. Some film footage of his corpse was later shown on television. Why did these onlookers not hold the dying man's hand and comfort him? The answer appalls Joe Simpson, who was himself left for dead in a crevasse at the foot of Siula Grande in Peru in 1985.



It is an uncomfortable ethical question that he is forced to confront as he attempts a difficult new route on Pumori, with a clear view of the whole South Col from close to the vantage point where Eric Shipton first spotted the way up the south side of Everest taken by Hillary and Tenzing in 1953. Now that Everest has become the playground of the rich, where commercial operators offer guided tours to the top up fixed ropes, camping amidst the detritus and unburied corpses of previous less fortunate climbers, Simpson wonders if the noble, caring instincts that once characterized mountaineering have been irrevocably displaced as in other facets of today's society.



On investigation, he finds it a less black and white issue that at first it seemed. "I shall never forget the horror of dying alone, the awful empty loneliness of it," he says. Yet his empathy for the victims of storms, altitude sickness, or misjudgments, is tested time and again as he explores anecdotally and in conversations with his companions on Pumori, the moral climate of mountaineering in the 1990s.

Genres: Nonfiction, Mountaineering, Adventure, Travel, Climbing, Biography, History

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Joe Simpson is the author of the bestselling Touching the Void, as well as four subsequent non-fiction books published by The Mountaineers Books: This Game of Ghosts, Storms of Silence, Dark Shadows Falling, and The Beckoning Silence. The Beckoning Silence won the 2003 National Outdoor Book Award. The other three published by The Mountaineers Books were all shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Award.

Reviews

[Audra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I'm in love.

Joe Simpson tackles the really big questions in this book: what are our obligations to our fellow humans? To the mountains? To the people who inhabit those mountains?

He includes in this book a full colour two page spread of the 1989? photo of the camp on Everest, complete with dead body and oxygen canisters and trash strewn about. He examines some of the recent mountaineering and trekking tragedies and compares them to earlier expeditions.

I feel the same way about a lot of these things that Joe Simpson does, namely if you're willing to step over a dead (or dying!) body to get to the summit you deserve to die on the mountain yourself, and if you're willing to haul oxygen bottles up the mountain to make it "easier" to climb you can damn well haul them right back down again.

[Matthew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bit of a 50/50 book this one, it's a little uneven and veers all over the place as Simpson clunkily tries to jam together a story of the '96 Everest disaster, his own thoughts on Mountaineering ethics and a (slightly pointless) coverage of his own Everest attempt. There are some really interesting and brilliant insights in here though so you still come away wanting to read more of his books but is all a bit of a muddle this one. A shame because he has some really important things to say here.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is kind of all over the place and I struggled to find a unifying theme or through line (there really isn't one). It's more like Joe Simpson's meditations on climbing and preaching about how he believes people should climb/should behave on mountains and in general. There are also interesting vignettes about various climbers that perished at high altitudes. It also discusses the dangers of taking Everest for granted (i.e. assuming it's easy because a lot of people do it) and the real concern about the pitiable environmental condition of the mountain (i.e. people just leaving garbage and dead bodies near campsites because there's no law that says they have to take them down). That Everest, which seems so pristine in the imagination, has become a dumping ground is truly a tragedy in and of itself.

In all, it's easy to read and it's not uninteresting. Joe Simpson, to me, has always seemed like kind of a jerk (he even says that he causes tensions in his own book!) but he's a pretty good writer. I've always had the sneaking suspicion that had the situations been reversed in "Touching the Void" he would have left Simon Yates behind as soon as a leg was broken and not even attempted the one-man rescue, so his exhortations about how climbers should always go to the aid of other climbers kind of ring hollow for me (although I do agree with him that basic human decency dictates that you don't just abandon or step past those in need). From his writing and interviews he's just never struck me as the type of person that, push comes to shove would put himself at risk for another person - but that's just a personal feeling. It's not like I know the guy in real life or anything and it's not like that detracted from my enjoyment of the book.

I guess I think ultimately what's unsaid in the book is that no one knows how we will behave in dire situations until we are in them. And then we can only hope that it's in us to make the honorable, ethical choice even though it's the more difficult and dangerous one. So yes, we should strive to do better and be better and help our fellow human beings, but it's hard to blanketly damn those that don't - especially when doing so would put them at personal risk - because it's easy for the untested to sit back and criticize, but how can you know if you would do the right thing, the brave thing until you are tested? Joe Simpson has definitely been tested with his personal survival, but I haven't read anything about him putting himself at risk to rescue somene else so that implorement comes off as disingenuous to me. That's just my personal opinion, though.

Again, it's an easy and interesting book to read, but it's not very coherent. I personally find Joe Simpson to be kind of an unreliable narrator but that actually makes it more, rather than less, interesting to me. The dialogue seemed super fake though. Like dollars to donuts there's no way those conversations were real - they were way too manufactured - but they did have some interesting information. They were just definitely obviously totally fake.

Joe Simpson also briefly discusses the conflict/difference between Alpine, Sport, Aid, and just full on expedition climbing which is interesting to me because I've always wondered about the seemlingly arbitrary differences in what people consider a "good" or "legitimate"or "skilled" climb. This may not be interesting to people that aren't already familiar with different types of climbing since it's only briefly touched on (like I said, the book is kind of all over the place), but his feelings on it were illuminating nonetheless (he's a pretty staunch Alpinist).

I would say:
+1 star if you really like mountaineering stories
-1 star if you would like a coherent narrative or thesis of some sort

[Igenlode Wordsmith · Rating 3 out of 5]

An honest polemic against the state of Everest (Simpson keeps suggesting that maybe even oxygen and other aids, e.g. ladders, fixed ropes, should be banned in order to keep incompetents off Everest, and then having to admit to himself that he would love to be up there with a commercial tour well enough equipped so that one could just enjoy the unique experience without having to fight every step), coupled with a lot of recapitulation of past disasters. Perhaps I have read too many other climbing books to be as outraged as he clearly expects us to be at the idea that climbers don't risk everything to save those who are already on the point of death, let alone to repatriate their corpses; I had already bought into the accepted wisdom that beyond a certain stage you can pass a man on the mountain in the conscious knowledge that he is doomed and that there is nothing you can do that will change that, without interpreting those accounts as being influenced either by greed or summit fever, but simply as a necessary acceptance that an inert body is too great a burden to handle, and those who can no longer move of their own accord have already passed the point of no return.

Simpson comes up with a list of cases when climbers suffering from horrific exposure have in fact subsequently survived, and extrapolates from this that a lot more effort morally ought to be made to save those who are normally written off as being beyond rescue. I'm not sure I was convinced, but he is not over-righteously dogmatic about it. He is prepared even to allow space for the argument that perhaps it doesn't matter if people are physically hauled up the mountain, however inartistic the true climbing elite may find this, and more than ready to admit that when things go wrong on a climb the prospect of a bit of fixed rope up ahead becomes suddenly far more welcome.

Personally I think I'd be more than happy to see a ban on climbing Everest, or a ban on climbing it unless without oxygen, which would amount to effectively to almost the same thing; easy for me to say as a non-climber who will never have the physical ability in the first place, but it's hard to see the point of trundling vast numbers of people up a well-worn route from which as much danger as possible has been removed. It seems only fair that the mountains get to bite back sometimes and prove that they are not altogether subjugated, but I get the impression that very few people going up Everest nowadays are doing it as any kind of technical challenge. In terms of actual climbing there are plenty of other, arguably more challenging peaks without the tourist allure (and yes, I'm speaking as someone whose nearest approach to mountains has been taking the steam railway up Mount Snowdon and walking to the top of Cader Idris by the well-trodden path among the holiday crowds).

[Amerynth · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Dark Shadows Falling" is yet another example of a climber decrying the media for its coverage of mountaineering accidents, then writing a book and making money by offering opinions about the accident themselves. I always find this odd.

However, Joe Simpson certainly has something to say that's worth hearing. His own near-death experience, well documented in the excellent book "Touching the Void," gives him an interesting perspective. This book, which is part memoir and part essay on concerns about climbing ethics and the attitude of getting to the summit at any cost.

An interesting and thought provoking read.

[Ella Stevens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Never climb Everest 😭

[Marsha Altman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book to read after you've already read several Everest books, especially Into Thin Air and other books about the 1996 disaster. Simpson is a famous alpine climber, meaning he believes in climbing without supplemental oxygen, sherpa assistance, or even fixed ropes if it's possible. Someone asked him his opinion on the events in '96 and he wrote a whole book on how terrible commercial climbing is and how selfish and cold-hearted climbers have become, giving other examples, such as in 1993 when some Dutch climbers didn't even try to rescue an Indian climber in distress 20 feet from their tent. Unlike other books, which are usually by survivors of disasters or journalists who avoid directly placing blame, Simpson names names and even has photographs of people that he thinks made terrible decisions. He thinks oxygen tanks should be banned from mountains in order to keep inexperienced climbers off them, while basically the opposite has happened and supplemental oxygen and sherpa help is more or less mandatory on Everest now. He was also upset about the environmental damage from waste, which Nepal was worked hard to clean up since 1997. He is negative about just about everyone except the Sherpas, and mentions that their deaths generally go unnoticed by media. In the second half of the book he has his own failures while climbing Pumori, but nobody dies. He comes across as a real jerk, and I love that there's a book like this to spice things up on my reading list.

[Phil Duckworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good, love Joe Simpson's books. Makes you think about the ethics involved in mountaineering and why people take the risks.

[Mdaly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book seems to be be two books uncomfortably squeezed together to fill out the pages. The first book concerns the ethics of climbers on Everest and other high mountains stepping over ill or dying climbers without offering any assistance. The second is a book about a failed attempt Simpson made to climb a new route up Pumori.
Personally I'm not familiar with all the mountaineering jargon about seracs, couloirs and Himalayan meteorology so I found some of passages about the actual climbs beyond me. The other musings about the ethics of leaving people to die alone on exposed mountains without offering assistance never reached any conclusion or insight other than readers were aware that the author disapproved of such callousness even when help might be futile. He stressed the simple humanity of the situation and reminded readers of his near death experience in South America where he said the simple desire not to die alone drove him on.
Simpson clearly thinks such behaviour is a modern phenomenon and would have been unthinkable in the glory days of mountaineering. I was disappointed that he didn't delve deeper into the reasons people can be so callous. He cites many anecdotes about clients abandoning sherpas when they got the opportunity to save themselves and guides who led clients into fatal situations where they should have known better.
Good book but could have been better.

[Yorkshiresoul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simpson provides an expert insider's account of the state of top level mountaineering in the late 1990's. He is scathing in his criticism of methods, groups and individuals whom he believes have departed from the true spirit of high altitude mountaineering into a win at all costs and profit mentality.

Simpson discusses the disastrous 1996 Everest expeditions, also well covered in John Krakauer's excellent book 'Into Thin Air', railing against what he sees as an unforgivable lapse of basic human ethics in the face of personal ambition.

Also mentioned is the harrowing death of a climber on Everest in 1992 who died only yards from other climbers who were safe inside their tents, and Simpson weighs all these things against his own determination to climb a new route up Pumori.

Simpson's writing is terse and heartfelt, his clear moral stance a clarion call for all those involved in potentially dangerous pursuits.

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nowhere near compelling as 'Touching the Void,' this books is basically Simpson's anti-Everest diatribe. The "action" of climbing is haphazard (why are we reading about him climbing that cliff in England?), and he's nowhere near as good talking about others' endeavors (and tragedies) on another mountain as he is at capturing the thrills of mountaineering when describing his own adventures.

The insight into the solitude of late-season climbing in the Himalayas was appreciated, but the criticisms of Everest and the lax "rules" of the sport are both repetitive and now almost quaintly dated, as things have not improved in almost any of the respects he brought up.

I would actually appreciate his take on the intervening 2 decades since he wrote this book to understand if he's seen any improvements 'from the inside' that may not be apparent to lay people.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

For Simpson, the new fad of "I summited Everest last May" is the latest high society cocktail name-dropping, but is stripping the very soul of mountaineering. Both blunt and reflective - deeply troubled by the changing face of climbing, and haunted by his own losses in the high peaks.

[Bookphenomena (Micky) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Superb insight into the ethics of high altitude mountaineering at the cusp of survival. As ever, Simpson's ability to write is one of the best in this genre and his own experience makes this credible.

[Emily Cleaver · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very readable, as Joe Simpson always is, although it does read in places like an extended rant post on a mountaineering forum. The descriptions of the climbing are vivid and gripping.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written and certainly shows deep thought about the changing morals as climbing has become more commercialised. I truly hope that Anatoli Boukreev read, or at least was told about, this book before his untimely death. Joe Simpson seems to have listened to all the accounts about the 1996 disaster and come to his own conclusion. He gives both sides of the oxygen argument but he then states "Given Boukreev's incredible mountaineering record, his work fixing the ropes on the route, his achievement as the first to reach the summit without bottled oxygen, his subsequent efforts to rescue Fischer the following day, and the fact that on the South Col that night he was the only one capable of going out repeatedly to rescue all of Fischer's surviving clients, it seems that his decision was justified."".....his actions that night undoubtedly saved at least three lives." Simpson later states "Anatoli Boukreev, the phenomenal mountain guide from Kazakhstan......". Simpson clearly admires and respects Boukreev because all his achievements were using his own strength and talent and not relying on others or artificial assistance.

This should not be surprising as Simpson has mixed feelings about the way climbing is going and in his heart believes that Everest and the other 8000ers should be climbed without oxygen and fixed lines to reduced all the problems we are seeing more of. Though he does admit that if he was given the chance to climb Everest for free if he used oxygen and fixed lines he may not be able to say no.

The issues raised in this book are all sensible and still stand sadly. The sheer number of people climbing is causing more rubbish and deaths on the slopes of the highest mountains. The more people there are the more stuff they use and leave. The more people there are the more chance of traffic jams at height where it is most dangerous. The fact it is so commercialised means money talks over experience and with guides people expect to summit even if they really don't have the skills themselves; this is evidenced using Hansen as an example and Hall having his better judgement compromised because Hansen was a client. Simpson uses the way almost all parties helped with evacuating the injured or guiding clients from other teams as well as their own in 1996 as an example of how climbing was and should be. Several teams lower on the mountain came up to help and gave some of their oxygen despite the fact it may compromise their own summit bid (IMAX). Many people behaved in an exemplary way including the Sherpas who went back up and rescued Gau despite him not being their client.

Because all nationalities are climbing at the same time some groups refuse to assist others when they are in need and basic morality is giving way to selfish desire to reach the peak. The worst examples of selfish behaviour provided are by Naar, a Dutch climbing leader in 1992, who refused to even try to help an Indian climber who had collapsed but was waving 30 yards from his tent. Simpson wonders if he would have tried if the man had not been Indian. The behaviour of Ian Woodall in 1996 is raised as he refused to lend batteries to help with communication during the disaster or to assist in any way (and his 4 most experienced climbers had already walked out of the expedition at base camp). The behaviour of the Japanese team on the Tibetan side just stepping over 3 incapacitated Indian team members, without even stopping or offering water or oxygen so they might get themselves moving down again, in 1996 is also raised.

An excellent book. Well written and well thought through. Simpson is obviously struggling with his love of climbing, the way it is changing and his personal morals. I'm glad there are people like Simpson raising the difficult questions and 27 years (and umpteen deaths later) on I truly hope more people will start raising these issues too.

[Nigel Pinkus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading a Joe Simpson mountaineering novel is a very moving experience. His writing has great power and wit, but best of all, he is very honest about how he sees the world and he lets you know it. In this latest expose, Mr. Simpson is quite disgusted with the behaviour and attitude that has crept into mountaineering in the last ten to twenty years. He gives examples after examples, of fellow mountaineers failing to help each other on some of the highest mountains in the world. Unfortunately, Mr. Simpson argues that climbers have also failed to help not only each other, but also they have failed to help the sherpa's that carry your gear, cook you dinner and get your tents ready for you every night. He reckons (and rightly so) that it is appalling behaviour to fail to stop and render assistance when help is required. He is not just talking about the failure to, for example, give water to someone who is thirsty. No, it is far much worse than that. Unfortunately, it is fundamentally about failing to stop and give aid to a dying person.

If anyone has any right to bring up such issues after having looked death squarely in the face, then Mr. Simpson has no equal. His first book about how he broke his leg on a very big mountain in South America, had his rope cut by his climbing partner and yet, went on to survive such an ordeal was just breath-taking. It was also a powerful, compelling and commanding verse about how one man didn't want to die alone and how he wanted someone-anyone, to at least hold his hand in his final moments. "Touching the Void" was a very appropriate title for his book because Mr. Simpson reckoned that meeting death was like a void where it was like a," black hole calling your name". (Dark Shadows Falling, p.23). Most amazing of all, was that he was able to look death in the eye, at least twice during that encounter, as it reached out to him and he was able to, literally, crawl away from it. He had decided that, 'no, it wasn't his time because he didn't want to die alone'. It was through the hope and desire to at least say goodbye to someone-anyone that kept him going. He thought that it wasn't right that he should die alone where no one would ever find his body, where it wouldn't be buried and it would remain in the open for the birds to come and pick it clean. Nobody deserves to die that way, nobody.

With this vast epilogue on his resume, Mr. Simpson wrote about how some mountaineers have displayed some of the poorest of poor climbing ethics that you would ever likely to see, while climbing some of the biggest mountains. He gives a plethora of examples of people failing to render assistance in a time of need. Many have argued that there was nothing that could be done at that time and so they chose not to even try. Others have argued that these people weren't part of there group so it wasn't there concern or problem. (Which, I think, is a very poor ethical response to a dying person). Also, it is a very scary thing to do to get involved and most people prefer not too when they don't know the person, there isn't much that can be done anyway and most disturbing of all, when the person will most certainly die. Mr. Simpson, knows about death more than more that most people will ever care to imagine and feels that you need to be brave and show some dignity by at least holding the persons hand, giving them some water and be at there side in the last part of their life. Not an easy thing to do, but if anyone has a right to feel that way, then Mr. Simpson has certainly deserves too. He knows more than most about 'black holes calling your name' and looking death in the eye than most people ever will.

[Lisa Wynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up in a second hand shop, mostly drawn in by the great photos and endpapers. It is a thoughtful and morally exploratory read. I love mountains, and I love walking on them, and though I don't aspire to expeditions, I am a bit fascinated by the reports of those who do. I think it's the otherness of the environment in places like Himalaya, and the human endeavour to survive there that really fascinates me. Conversely, the opaque role of guides and sherpas has always given me pause, not to mention my horror at the overcrowding and negative environmental impacts reported in recent years. Although this book was written in the mid-nineties, from this vantage, it seems to have coincided with something of a turning point in the mass commercialisation of expeditions.

Given the context of being a climbing accident survivor, and using the framing of a Himalayan expedition of his own, Simpson is powerfully positioned to describe and discuss the ethics of high-altitude expeditions. It is quite bleak. Simpson meditates at length on the fates of climbers who were left to die at the highest altitudes, and moreover, he probes the ethics and mindsets of other climbers who passed by or did not intervene.

Even if it might be dated, I would recommend this for anyone interested in high-altitude expeditions, anyone engaged in risky outdoor pursuits, or simply as an important piece of perspective for armchair mountaineers.

[Finuala · Rating 2 out of 5]

'In 1992, an Indian climber was left to die high on the South Col of Mount Everest by other climbers who watched his feebly waving hand from their tent thirty yards away. He was even filmed in his last hours for a television feature. Why did the onlookers not hold the dying man's hand and comfort him?'

This is the jumping off point for the book and it's a good one. Joe Simpson, himself left for dead in a crevasse on Siula Grande, Peru, is horrified that the answer to the above question is that it might have jeopardised the summit bid of the onlookers. Even if the man was dying, Simpson argues that comfort in his last moments would have made a difference and also shown the basic decency of the mountaineering community.

The first third of the book is devastating: awful and wonderful, Joe considers what has happened to this basic decency he had assumed was universal and whether it no longer exists.

Unfortunately, the rest of the book doesn't live up to the start. Simpson goes around in circles asking the same question and starts to come across a little like a petulant child; even his friends point out that if he was offered a place on an Everest summit team, he'd probably take it. It isn't that the questions he's asking aren't valid, they most certainly are, it's just that they lose power when they become a stick with which to beat the reader.

[Darla Ebert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having followed Joe Simpson's writings for years my interest was piqued when I stumbled over this gem in a used bookstore here in the Philippines! I was not disappointed as the subject matter was thought provoking and should invoke guilt in anyone with a human heart. I had to look deep inside asking myself how I would react in similar situations as have faced the climbers of Everest. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to experience Everest vicariously but would caution against a too-quick conclusion about one's confidence in one's own expected altruism if faced with similar situations.

[Dave Clarke · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book in desperate need of a more critical editor, whilst snippets are great, and the anecdotes show his great passion for climbing, the disjointed style doesn't make for easy reading, coupled with what starts out as a preaching narrative of how he thinks people should behave doing what he thinks should be a more exclusive activity .. ultimately his own arguments are lost, and he does have the self awareness to include conversations where his views are openly challenged, but it does feel like this was 3 or more short stories smashed together to make a book.

[Jean Dupenloup · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another wonderful memoir and meditation on the big hills by the author of Touching the Void.

With his usual wit and clarity, Joe Simpson casts an accusatory eye on the immorality of high-stakes mountaineering on the tallest Himalayan peaks.

He is not afraid to challenge the climbing industry that in its greed sends unprepared rich novices to the highest summits, and condemns them to death.

Mr. Simpson’s musings on the nature of altruism and its limits are chilling.

[Julian Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Openly challenging conventional thought, this is a great read.

Much is written about what drives people to pit themselves against the odds, but the author takes a single devastating incident of apparent disregard for human life and explores the essence of the climbing experience and overlays it with that of survival in human nature.

Well-written and instantly engaging, this is hugely thought-provoking read.

[Sarah Clough · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just not really my thing. The first two chapters were very detailed but without the context to help you put it all together, for example referencing a climber who you may have been told about once, and expecting you to remember who they were and their significance. It improved after that, although I prefer a story to a few thoughts.

[Louisa]

went into chamonix and bought almost all their english books about mountaineering. joe simpson is much more a climber than a writer, i really don’t understand why the jacket reviews were so enthusiastic, but i guess that’s on me bc jacket reviews are supposed to be enthusiastic. regret. only thing i learned was how truly, deeply callous the mountains can make ppl.

[John Maxfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

Half way through I stopped reading. I mentioned this to a friend who had also only read to half way. Joe makes very important observations about mountaineering and people's attitudes to the mountains and their fellow climbers, clients, porters etc. Sadly it is not likely to return to a "golden age".

[Manuel Chiacchiararelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro molto interessante sull'alpinismo moderno e sulla perdita dei valori principali, messi da parte per fama di successo, di record e, ovviamente, di denaro.
Fa pensare.
E, come tutti i libri di Simpson, veramente ben scritto.

[Scott Townley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm a sucker for extreme climbing stories, and Joe Simpson's "Into the Void" was a classic. But in this case the book seems to have no convincing centre, and he lacks the intellectual gravitas for the philosophical exploration of ethics in climbing that he attempts to undertake.

[Mia Lie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spennende tematikk som tas opp og diskuteres. Kunne gjerne hatt mer av det og mindre av ekspedisjonen (eller enten det ene eller det andre). Noe lite engasjerende til tider, men når den er engasjerende, er den det virkelig. Skremmende aktuelt nå med tanke på hva som skjedde på K2 27. juli.

[Hilary · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just found it insufferable.

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book riveting, hated to have to put it down.