Since his epic battle for survival in the Andes, recounted in the bestselling Touching the Void, Joe Simpson has endured several further brushes with death and has suffered the loss of many climbing friends in accidents which call into question the exhilarating, death-defying activity to which he has devoted his whole life. Never more alive than when most at risk, he has come to see an attempt on the Eiger, with its hooded, mile-high North Face, as the culmination of his climbing career. In a narrative which takes the reader through extreme experiences from an avalanche in South America, ice-climbing in the Alps and Colorado and paragliding in Spain before his final confrontation with the Eiger and two more deaths Simpson reveals the inner truth of climbing, exploring both the power of the mind and the frailties of the body.