Paul Pritchard - A mountaineer on Her Majesty's payroll

Born at the top of a quarry and a teenager at a time when work in the United Kingdom was scarce, Paul Pritchard is the unemployed climber par excellence, the one who lived for climbing, funding himself with the dole. Reviled by some for not leading a more conventional lifestyle, in Deep Play Pritchard justifies the state's investment with an eloquent and gripping account of the pressures and rewards of modern climbing.
Pritchard's growth as a climber takes shape gradually, from his beginnings in the Peak District in England to his move to North Wales, where he began to make a name for himself on the sea cliffs of Anglesey.
In 1987, in Scotland with Johnny Dawes, Pritchard made the free ascent of The Scoop, the aid route on the overhanging face of Sron Ulladale.
In 1992 with Simon Yates, Noel Craine and Sean Smith, Pritchard set off for Patagonia, where he put up a major new route on the East Face of the Central Tower of Paine.

Other climbs followed, notable repeats, first ascents and sometimes near-defeats on the knife-edge of death, on Mount Asgard, in Yosemite, at Bariloche, on the Trango Towers and on Meru; new trips to Patagonia and more new routes in the United Kingdom.
In 1997 he won the Boardman Tasker Prize for mountain literature with the book "Deep Play",
published in Italy by Versante Sud.
With the prize money he set off on a round-the-world trip that finally took him to climb a slender pillar of rock off the coast of Tasmania, known as the
Totem Pole. And it was there, on Friday 13 February 1998, that a large block, after falling 25 metres,
struck him on the head.
The injuries were so serious that the doctors thought he would never again walk or speak; the whole right side of his body was left paralysed.
So Pritchard spent the following year in a wheelchair, struggling to recover the ability
to speak and his memory.

The book that tells of these events, "Totem Pole", would win a second Boardman Tasker Award, an honour without precedent.
After the accident Paul stayed on to live in Tasmania, where he married and had a daughter. Although disabled, he wanted to go on living actively, achieving genuine feats.

Paul did indeed go back to climbing, and in 2005 he was part of an expedition to Kilimanjaro made up entirely of disabled people.
In his thrilling show, in which he tells of many of his climbs, Pritchard reflects on the lesson he learnt in the mountains and during his experience as a disabled person. Indeed Paul maintains that
what saved him was seeing his rehabilitation after the accident as the longest
expedition of his life.
His new existence conveys the message that a life need not stop even after such a serious trauma.

"I think the accident is the best thing that has happened to me, because it projected me into a different
life: I have even thought that I went looking for the accident on purpose, albeit unconsciously, to avoid a boring life, not wanting to become like many of my fellow climbers".

Among the climbers' autobiographies we have reviewed there is also Topo di Falesia by Jerry Moffatt.

For another tale of extreme mountaineering read Psycho Vertical by Andy Kirkpatrick.