‘Pleasure and Pain’ – Simon retelling the story of survival

‘TOUCHING the Void’ mountaineer, Simon Yates, is a veteran of over eighty expeditions to high/remote mountains around the globe and shows no signs of slowing down.

This is his story of the last decade, of new adventures and climbs in the far north and south, along with summits in South America, Central Asia and the Himalaya.

In 2023, Simon travelled with legendary British mountaineer Mick Fowler to attempt the unclimbed north face of Patkhor in Tajikistan but contracted food poisoning from their freeze-dried food on just the second day.

After some debate, they continued, but this was just the beginning of a series of events that would see them run out of food, retreat below the summit in a storm and have Simon take a bone-breaking 100m fall during the descent.

After two days of lying on the glacier waiting for a helicopter, rescuers finally arrived but were unable to carry Simon down.

Somehow, he would need to summon the energy for the painful three-day walk to safety.

This week, The Echo sat down with Simon to discuss ‘Pleasure and Pain’, a retelling of his story of survival which performs in the Civic Theatre on April 20 at 7.30pm.

Be sure to check the Civic website for details on booking tickets.

What inspired you to become a mountaineer?

When I was fifteen I got the chance to go on an outdoor activities course through school.

The course was based at Coniston in the English Lake District. It was a magical week.

The sun shone; we canoed and swam in the lake, hiked on the fells and slept in the open one night near the summit of England’s highest mountain, Scafell Pike.

In the final evening’s briefing one of the outdoor instructors informed us that he was going rock climbing on the final day and could take two students.

I eagerly stuck up my hand and spent that final day climbing on Dow Crag, high up on The Old Man of Coniston.

I did not know it at the time, but it was the start of what looks like being a lifelong passion for mountaineering.

What inspired you to produce ‘Pleasure and Pain’ as you tell the story of what you have got up to in the last decade?

I’ve been lucky enough to visit and climb in some of the most remote mountain wildernesses on the planet during the last decade or more.

It’s a privilege to be able to share stories and images from such special places with an audience, and that is what inspires me.

Hopefully, some of them are inspired by me also. What I like about this show is that it has two contrasting halves.

The first features over a decade of climbs and travels in the far north and south, along with summits in South America, Central Asia and Nepal.

The second half of the show takes on a darker tone, as a 2023 expedition to a peak called Patkhor in Tajikistan I undertook with veteran British mountaineer Mick Fowler unravelled after contracting food poisoning from freeze-dried food at our first camp on the mountain.

As it turned out, this was just the beginning of a series of mishaps, including a serious accident, which thankfully had a happy ending for both me and, ultimately, the presentation.

A good story needs a powerful ending, and I guess falling 100m, breaking multiple bones and somehow surviving would be enough, but a final twist meant that I still had to walk out from the mountains under my own steam over three painful days to reach safety.

What has been involved in organising this show?

In terms of creating the show, the time-consuming preparation is matching the stories you want to tell with suitable images.

It involves a lot of trawling through massive files of images collected over many years and finding the best, most dramatic or simply the most suitable ones to use to tell the story in the most entertaining way.

I then tried the show out at a few venues before touring with it last autumn.

Dion at Speakers From The Edge sorts the venues, bookings and marketing.

I sort out my own accommodation for while I’m on tour and drive myself.

I also have a selection of my books and posters that I sell at the venues that have to be ordered before I hit the road.

Because I’m touring Ireland there have been a couple of ferry journeys to add to the mix as well.

What has been your favourite part of working on it so far and why?

Spent eleven nights in a row on the England/Wales/Scotland tour last autumn.

You get into a rhythm of matching the words to the images, and you can experiment night to night, see the audience response and alter things a little to make the show better.

What have been some of the biggest challenges involved so far, and how have you navigated them?

Doing eleven nights in a row! I’d not done such a big block of back-to-back shows for probably twenty years.

It was a lot of driving, both in the day and night. I was pretty tired by the end of it all.

The edges of my lips cracked from so much talking, but at least I did not loose my voice, which has happened to me once in the past.

It’s not natural to talk for 45 minutes without stopping, have a 15 minute break and then do it all again.

Normal conversation is broken, as you spend some of the time listening.

What is next for you? Do you have any other projects planned for 2026?

I’ve just been down in Tierra del Fuego for the first time in a number of years.

It’s a place that is very close to my heart and sadly might have been my swan song to that part of the world.

The Belgian captain of a yacht, who facilitated getting my expeditions into the mountains, is leaving the area.

He’s 74 now and has decided that sailing in that part of the world on a large yacht, quite often on his own, is getting a bit too much for him.

He’s heading back to Europe to warmer climes and gentler seas and plans to get a smaller yacht that will be easier for him to sail.

My next project is another yacht-supported adventure at the other end of the Atlantic to some mountains on the east coast of Greenland in August.

We’ll do a round trip starting in Ísafjörður in northwest Iceland and cross the Denmark Strait to Greenland, climb for a couple of weeks and then head back to Reykjavik.

Who would you like to thank for helping you with this project?

All my climbing partners; the hundreds of people around the world who facilitated what we were doing; and a special shout-out to my Tajik rescuers.

On a more personal level I would also like to thank Dion at Speakers From The Edge for organising and promoting my ‘Pleasure and Pain’ tours of the UK and Ireland.