In the realm of extreme sports, you often read about life and death situations as adventurers recount their latest narrow escape or wild ride.
But as you turn the pages of that glossy magazine, you often wonder how many of these sponsored athletes ever really faced the reality of a true life or death decision.
Simon Yates is one those athletes. Yates is coming to the Squamish Mountain Festival, presented by Arc'teryx, to recount the highs and lows of his life as a mountaineer as well as what its like to be the focal point of one of the most renowned events in mountaineering history.
Over the past two decades, Yates has dedicated his life to climbing and has an international reputation as one of the most successful exploratory mountaineers in the world. But he is best known for the harsh decision he faced in 1985 during his descent of Peru's Siula Grande with climbing partner Joe Simpson.
When, believing Joe to be dead following a severe fall, Yates had to make the stark choice to cut the rope that joined them in order to save his own life - a story retold in Joe's best selling book, and the award-winning film, Touching the Void, which made both men household names.
Squamish Mountain Festival co-ordinator Ivan Hughes met Yates in 2004 when he was a guest speaker at the Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival, and Hughes has been trying to get him to Squamish ever since.
"We spent quite a bit of time trading travel stories over pints of beer at [Vancouver's] Fringe Caf茅," said Hughes. "He was about to have his first child and wondered how his life was about to take another huge turn, but all anyone wanted to know about him was why he cut he rope.
"I admit that at first I was guilty of that same question, but then I learned that Simon had carried on to climb in some of the most remote and rarely explored mountain ranges of the world and I realized how far in the past that moment was for him."
Yates is coming to the Squamish Mountain Festival to tell his story. It is a gripping account and a philosophical journey through a white-knuckle world of experiences.
With his dry wit and rational approach, Yates's lecture is both inspirational and entertaining, while his stunning images transport the audience to some of the highest and most treacherous peaks in the world.
Yates describes his show as "amazing tales from an incredible life lived to the full," and hopes that it will give his audience a taste of both the mountain environment and the extreme mental and physical challenges he has faced.
Based in the Lake District, England, he has made numerous first ascents in the Pakistani Karakoram, Tien Shan mountain range in Kazakhstan and the Peruvian Andes. He's recently returned from completing a first ascent of new route on Mount Vancouver in the Wrangell-Saint Elias Range which one of the highest summits in North America.
"I've been asking Simon to come to the Squamish Mountain Festival for four years and every time he's been busy on expeditions, but this year he's put everything else aside" said Hughes. "We both have two kids now and its time to catch up."
Yates will be part of an adventure filmmaking seminar at the Squamish Adventure Centre on Saturday, Aug. 15 and will speak again that night at the Eagle Eye Theatre. Tickets for the event are $15.
The presentations are only a small part of the weekend's event. For more infomormation and tickets, go to www.squamishmountainfestival.com, Valhalla Pure, Climb On or the Squamish Adventure Centre.
