Two climbers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, left their base camp by a lake and startedclimbing the north face of a mountain called Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. This climb was
incredibly dangerous but the two men were experienced climbers and physically fit. On Day 1, the
weather was good and the climb began well. At night they made a snow cave and slept on the side
of the mountain.
Three days later, after some very difficult climbing and bad weather, the two men stood at
the summit. Unfortunately, the weather was getting worse so they didn’t stay long. As they were
going down a mountain ridge, a disaster happened. Simpson fell and broke his knee. Quickly, Yates
tied a rope to himself and then to his friend. He began lowering Simpson down the mountain and,
for hours and hours, Yates helped Simpson get down the mountain. They were getting close to the
glacier at the bottom of the mountain but suddenly Simpson slipped. This time he went over the
edge of a cliff. He was hanging in mid-air. Simpson shouted up to Yates, but the wind was blowing
loudly and Yates couldn’t hear him.
(Source: Reader’s Digest USA, September 2018)
After you read the text above, answer the following questions:
a. what is the main idea of paragraph 1?
b. what does the word “he” in ’this time he went over the edge of a cliff’ (par. 2) refer to?
c. what can you infer about the position of the climbers from the word ’summit’ before the disaster
happened in paragraph 2?
d. continue the story based on the information of the text in less than 5 sentences.