Ep 65: Paul Pritchard - Cutting Edge Extreme Rock Climber who suffered a traumatic brain injury

Paul was an extreme rock climber and mountaineer  from the UK. His adventures took him from Europe to the Himalayas, the Karakoram to Patagonia, Baffin Island to Australia

On Friday the 13th of February 1998 a TV-sized boulder falling from 25 meters inflicted such terrible head injuries that doctors thought he might never walk or even speak again.

Being in hospital for a year gave Paul the impetus to write his second book: The Totem Pole in 2000. This narrative about his personal journey through hemiplegia also won the Boardman/Tasker prize and the Banff Mountain Book Festival Grand Prize and was translated into four languages. Nominated for the Banff Prize, The Longest Climb followed in 2005.

He has continued to lead a challenging life, climbing Kilimanjaro, caving, sea kayaking, river rafting and, in 2009, lead rock climbing again. Paul rode a recumbent trike through Tibet to Mount Everest and, in 2016 he finally climbed the Totem Pole, 18 years after his accident. His latest journey was the 2152 km World Expeditions Lowest to Highest Expedition.

Paul has spent his time since the accident in contemplation of the hemiplegia which has robbed his right side of movement and continues to play tricks with his speech and memory. He sees the accident as a precious gift and describes it as the best thing that has ever happened to him. He is a passionate believer that without the mountains he climbed, and moreso the Totem Pole accident, he would not have learnt some crucial life lessons.

Those lessons learned in the mountains got him through a harrowing injury, and the painfully slow recovery process has engendered a life lived in the moment.

"I use them still, repeatedly, each day of my second, radically different life." 

When he won the Boardman/Tasker Award for mountain literature in 1997, with his book Deep Play, he spent the prize money on a world climbing tour that found him in Tasmania climbing a slender sea stack known as The Totem Pole. It was here that all he had known before was turned on its head.

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