PBS

First episode of BBC's Earth's Natural Wonders: Living on the Edge. The first of two programs in which cameras explore some of the most inhospitable places on the planet and the people who live there, including a team of Sherpa roping a route up to Mount Everest, farmers fighting pitched battles to save their crops from marauding elephants on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, or conservationists trying to ensure a condor chick’s survival on Grand Canyon. In the Everest section, the film crew follows a team of Icefall Doctors, the Sherpas who are responsible for securing and making possible the route to Everest through the notorious Khumbu Icefall, while installing ropes and stairs to cross the huge crevasses of the glacier.

A short documentary that continues the story of 'Touching the void'. The film tells what happened after Joe Simpson was found next to Siula Grande's base camp: how did his companions assisted him, how did they managed to take him to the Lima hospital without the assistance of a rescue team... Joe and Simon also speak about how Yates was criticised for cutting the rope by a misleading article in a national newspaper and how their friends and the climbing community responded. Simpson published an article in the climbing press shortly afterwards, and later wrote Touching the Void.

Based on Joe Simpson’s international bestseller, 'Touching the Void' documents one of the most extraordinary true stories of adventure and survival of our time. Made by Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald, the film recounts a fateful climb Joe Simpson and his mountaineering partner, Simon Yates, undertook in the Peruvian Andes in 1985. This feature documentary combines dramatic reconstruction of the climb, and interviews with the two climbers nearly killed on the 21,000-foot Siula Grande. The big success of the movie inspired the whole I Shouldn't Be Alive TV series, from the same producers.