Joe Simpson didn't anticipate experiencing, again, the events described in Touching the Void. A fall in the Himalayas crippled and almost broke him. Forced to test his nerve he struggled on crutches to 20,000 feet on Pumori only to hear the news of the death of yet one more friend in the mountains. In an attempt to find a catharsis for his confused emotions, he wrote this memoir of the signposts that have directed him since childhood to live as an adventurer.