The Wild Within

‘All mountaineers develop differently. Some go higher, some try ever-steeper faces and others specialise in a particular range or region. I am increasingly drawn to remoteness – to places where few others have trod.’

The Wild Within is the third book from Simon Yates, one of Britain’s most accomplished and daring mountaineers. With his insatiable appetite for adventure and exploratory mountaineering, Yates leads unique expeditions to unclimbed peaks in the Cordillera Darwin in Tierra del Fuego, the Wrangell St-Elias ranges on the Alaska-Yukon border, and Eastern Greenland. Laced with dry humour, he relates his own experience of the rapid commercialisation of mountain wilderness, while grappling with his new-found commitments as a family man. At the same time he must endure his role in the film adaptation of Joe Simpson’s Touching The Void, having to relive the events of that trip to Peru for a Hollywood director.

Yates’ subsequent escape to the some of the world’s most remote mountains isn’t quite the experience it once was, as he witnesses first hand the advance of modern communications into the wilderness, signalled by the ubiquitous mobile phone masts appearing in once-deserted mountain valleys. He is left to dwell on the remaining significance of mountain wilderness and must rediscover what the notion of ‘wild’ means for him now.

Author Biography

Simon Yates is an internationally acclaimed mountaineer, adventurer and author who first came to prominence in 1985 after the first ascent of the West Face of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes and the ensuing epic descent described in Joe Simpson’s book Touching the Void. In a prolific career spanning over thirty years, Simon’s climbing adventures have taken him west to east, from Alaska to Australia; and from north to south, from the Canadian Arctic to the tip of South America. He has climbed with many of Britain’s leading mountaineers including Andy Cave, Mick Fowler, Andy Parkin, Paul Pritchard and Doug Scott, establishing many first ascents in the process. He is the author of two previous books, Against the Wall and The Flame of Adventure, both released to critical acclaim and the former finishing as runner-up for the prestigious Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature. The Wild Within, also shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Award, is his third book. Simon lives in Cumbria with his wife, son and daughter. When not writing and lecturing he runs his own expedition company, Mountain Dream.