The Wild Within - Simon Yates
The Wild Within is a book from Simon Yates, one of Britain's most acclaimed mountaineers. Yates first came to public attention 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. His career has spanned almost thirty years, with climbs across the world from Alaska to Australia and 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. Before writing The Wild Within, Yates had published Against the Wall and The Flame of Adventure. When not writing and lecturing, he runs his own expedition company, Mountain Dream.
The Wild Within was shortlisted for the 2012 Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature, and is an autobiographical account of climbing adventures in the world's remote ranges, including the Cordillera Darwin, Alaska and Greenland.
"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." 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 Alaskan-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 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.