Paul Pritchard

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Pritchard in Patagonia

Paul Liam Pritchard (born April 26, 1967 in Bolton , Lancashire ) is a British climber , mountaineer and award-winning author who lives in Tasmania . Since a climbing accident on the Totem Pole in February 1998, his right half of his body has been paralyzed.

biography

Climbers and mountaineers

While Paul Pritchard grew up in Bolton in northern England, he lived with his family on the Spanish Costa Blanca during the winter months . As a teenager he discovered his talent for sport climbing in the abandoned quarries of Bolton . After he decided against the little-loved football during school activities, he was promoted by one of his teachers. In 1986 Pritchard moved to the British "climbing capital" Llanberis and made a name for himself as the first to climb many difficult routes in Wales , including the particularly tricky Super Calebrese ( difficulty level E8 ) on Gogarth . Around 1990 he turned increasingly to alpine climbing and undertook expeditions abroad to Patagonia , the Baffin Island or the Pamir . His most outstanding accomplishments include routes at Torres del Paine , Mount Asgard, and Trango Tower . Twice he barely survived serious accidents: In the Scottish Highlands , he suffered four vertebral fractures, a broken sternum and a fractured skull in a 50-meter fall . In 1993 he had to be resuscitated by a climbing partner after a crash on Gogarth.

After contributions to various journals, his book debut Deep Play was published in 1997 , a collection of autobiographical essays that was awarded the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountaineering Literature , endowed with 2000 pounds , in the same year .

1998 accident

Totem pole

After reading a magazine article by Steve Monks about the Totem Pole in Tasmania , Pritchard wanted to try climbing it himself. On February 13, 1998, he and his partner Celia Bull reached Cape Hauy in the Tasman National Park , from where they wanted to abseil down to the base of the breakwater. At the bottom, a rock the size of a television loosened from the wall and hit Pritchard in the head. It took Bull three hours to pull the seriously injured Pritchard onto a ledge 30 meters above the ground, where she left him covered in blood for help. A total of ten hours passed, with a 4 by 5 cm wound and spinal fluid leaking , before arriving at the Hobart hospital . Due to the location of the ravine, the rescue could not be carried out by helicopter, but had to be carried out by lifeboat.

"I'd probably chosen the most difficult place to get rescued in the whole of Tasmania."

"I chose the most difficult place in Tasmania to be saved."

- Paul Pritchard

At the Royal Hobart Hospital , doctors saved Pritchard's life in a six-hour brain operation, who has since had to live with hemiplegia of the right half of his body. Complete rehabilitation took a year and the casualty had to learn both to walk and to speak again. He processed the events in 1999 in his second book, The Totem Pole , which was the first publication to win both the Boardman Tasker Prize and the main prize at the Banff Mountain Book Festival .

After the accident

Despite limited mobility, Pritchard continued his sporting adventures. He started trekking in Utah in 2000 and climbed peaks in the Mount Kenya massif and Kilimanjaro in the following years . He also undertook, among other things, a rafting trip on the Franklin River and reached on the trike the Mount Everest - Base Camp in Tibet . In 2005 his third book The Longest Climb was published , in which he continues on his way back to life. In lectures and readings around the world, he mainly campaigns for the acceptance of people with brain damage.

In April 2016, Pritchard returned to Totem Pole with a team of ten friends and helpers to catch up on the ascent. Steve Monks, who defeated “The Tote” in free style for the first time in 1995 , assisted his compatriot, who worked his way to the top of the pillar with 126 one-handed arm strokes. The expedition was immortalized in the short film Doing It Scared , which premiered in 2017.

Paul Pritchard married the nurse and amateur climber Jane Boucher and lives with her and two children in Tasmania.

Ascents (selection)

  • 1984/85: Lancashire : Perimeter Walk , Strawberry Kiss
  • 1986: Dinorwic Quarry : Rainbow of Recalcitrance , Raped by Affection , Dawes of Perception
  • 1987: Dinorwic Quarry: I Ran the Bath , Bathtime , Wishing Well , Cure for a Sick Mind
  • 1987: Gogarth : Enchanted Broccoli Garden , The Super Calebrese , The Unrideable Donkey
  • 1987: Sron Ulladale: The Scoop
  • 1989: Sron Ulladale: Knuckle Sandwich , Moskill Grooves
  • 1991/92: Torres del Paine - central tower: El Regalo de Mwoma , north tower: El Caballo del Diablo
  • 1994: El Capitan : Adrift
  • 1994: Mount Asgard : Hyperborea
  • 1995: Trango Tower : Slovene Route
  • 1996: Gogarth: Sign of the Sun Dog , 93 Million Miles
  • 1997: Ak-Su-Tal: The Wall of Dykes

bibliography

  • Deep Play: A Climber's Odyssey from Llanberis to the Big Walls. Mountaineers Books, Seattle 1997, ISBN 978-0-89-886565-3 , 192 pp.
  • The Totem Pole and a Whole New Adventure. Mountaineers Books, Seattle 1999, ISBN 978-0-89-886696-4 , 208 pp.
  • The Longest Climb: Back from the Abyss. Constable & Robinson, London 2005, ISBN 978-1-84-119477-6 , 288 pp.

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Deep Play. Climbing the World's Most Dangerous Routes. 2nd edition, Vertebrate Publishing, Sheffield 2012, Kindle edition, ISBN 978-1-906148-59-1 .
  2. ↑ a b Julietta Jameson: Paul Pritchard: Five Places That Changed My Life. Traveler, June 16, 2017, accessed March 19, 2018 .
  3. ^ Climber Paul scales literary heights. The Bolton News, October 24, 1997, accessed March 19, 2018 .
  4. ^ A b Julia Stewart: A Family Affair: Rocky road to romance. The Independent , September 19, 1999, accessed March 20, 2018 .
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Carol Rääbus: Paul Pritchard climbs Tasmania's Totem Pole 18 years after it nearly killed him. ABC , April 13, 2016, accessed March 14, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Blog - The Totem Pole - 20 Years On. Paul Pritchard, accessed March 20, 2018 .
  7. ↑ To Adventurer's Life. Paul Pritchard, accessed March 20, 2018 .
  8. ↑ The Totem Pole. Paul Pritchard, accessed March 20, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Pritchard, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pritchard, Paul Liam (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British climber and author
DATE OF BIRTH April 26, 1967
PLACE OF BIRTH Bolton (Greater Manchester)