On their first day of climbing Joe and Simon made great progress. They drank 4-5 liters of water a day to keep from becoming dehydrated, which helped considerably with a vigorous ascent. Moving fast with the risky Alpine Style of climbing (no high elevation base camps, the barest of supplies and roped only to one another), they had no room for error. Running into a storm on the second day they decided to create a snow cave, hunker down and ride it out, since it took 5-6 hours to climb only 200 feet.

On the third day they reached the summit and because of the difficulties with the route they took to the top, they decided to take what they thought was a less challenging path down. Things went from going very well to "wildly wrong." Eighty percent of accidents happen on the way down and such was the case here.

Hampered by whiteout conditions and bitter cold, Joe fell and broke several bones in his right leg, with a portion of bone pushed thorough his knee joint. It would have been acceptable to leave him where he was and say the empty words "I’ll go for help," but Simon decided to bandage Joe up and try and get him down the mountain. The plan was to caterpillar down with their 300 feet of rope. Simon would stop every 150 feet (their two ropes were tied together) and signal Joe to give him enough slack so he could get the knot past his harness. Notwithstanding the severe pain that Joe was experiencing, they made good progress until Joe dropped over a precipice. When Joe was not able to release the slack from the rope because his body was hanging as dead weight, he was beginning to pull Simon over the edge as well. Simon made the difficult but necessary choice to cut the rope. Joe fell about 150 feet, and luckily he landed within a few feet of a much deeper crevice that would have killed him for sure.

Simon continued his descent and eventually made it down the mountain to base camp. He stayed there for a few days and then he burned Joe’s clothes, as a means to put closure to his friend’s certain death.

Meanwhile, Joe tried to climb out of the fissure, but his hands were too numb and he had too far to climb. At times he was on ice that he could hear was starting to crack and fall away beneath his feet. Eventually, he decided to venture further into the void and as luck would have it, he found a way out. Suffering from severe dehydration, because he had no food or water, Joe knew he had to get down the mountain fast. Reinforcing the splint on his leg, so the large boulders would do no further damage, he slid and maneuvered down. He threw away what few supplies he had left, in order to travel light. Joe’s belief in being an atheist was tested, as he never did say any "Hail Mary’s." What he did to survive was "keep making decisions, even if they are wrong." Often when he looked out into the distance, he would focus on where he needed to be in 20 minutes and placed 150% of his attention on achieving that goal.

At the point when his body would go no further, Joe was fairly close to base camp and he used all of his remaining strength to yell. Surprisingly, Simon heard him and he was rescued. The first words Joe spoke to Simon were to thank him for helping him get down the mountain, and that if the roles were reversed he too would have cut the rope.

Director Kevin Macdonald, the Academy Award winning director of "One Day in September" has once again made an outstanding film.