Paul Pritchard is a cutting-edge British rock climber and mountaineer, whose love of the sport has taken him all over the world.
Pritchard is also a writer and when he won an award with his first book, he naturally spent the prize money on a world climbing tour, which took him to Tasmania.
During the excursion, a huge boulder fell onto him and he suffered a catastrophic brain injury, epilepsy, problems with his speech and memory, and was paralysed down one side.
But he tells Kathryn Ryan why he regards his accident as a precious gift.
Paul Pritchard and The Totem Pole in Tasmania, where he nearly died. Photo: supplied/pintrest
The accident happened in 1998 when Pritchard was climbing a 65-metre rock stack called The Totem Pole.
“[The accident] just allowed me to be more empathic with others, but more than that to really see the true reality of life, I think,” he says.
“[And to] not just be comfortable with impermanence, but comfortable with the ultimate impermanence of death, [because] the totem pole wasn't the first massive accident that I had.
“Eight years before, I fell off a sea cliff in Britain, 30 meters into the sea and I actually drowned and saw what it was like to die because for, I don’t know, 10 minutes, I actually did die.”
After his head was practically split open by the boulder at Totem Pole, his partner at the time, Celia, helped rescue him with “superhuman effort”, he says.
“I was right at the bottom of the Totem Pole when the rock hit me, so hanging above the sea, upside down, blood pouring out my head into the sea, and she was at the halfway ledge about 30 meters up.
“And she had to come down to me and get me upright in the system of slings and then climb back up to the rope and then set up a haul line and haul me 30 meters back up to the ledge.
“She did get me onto the ledge and then she had to make me safe, put me in the recovery position and just go and leave me and get help. And she had to extricate herself off this needle of rock and then climb the cliffs opposite, run six-and-a-half kilometres for help, because it was in the days before mobile phones as well.”
Initially, doctors thought he might never walk or even speak again, but he says his experiences are what helped him cope through the recovery.
“I was in the hospital for a year, much of that time not being able to walk or talk. But I kept going back to the mountains in my mind and I realised that without the mountains I would not have fared as well as I did in the accident, because I actually had to really, really survive the accident.
“I mean, lost half of my blood but then to find meaning during that year in hospital and even now, you know I still can't really walk very easily, but I still think that without the mountains and without taking something from wild nature, I definitely would not have fared so well. I realised that they’re a very, very important thing.”
Since then, Pritchard has climbed Mt Kilimanjaro, he's caved, sea kayaked, river rafted, and ridden a recumbent bike through Tibet to Mt Everest.
Despite the painfulness of rock climbing now, he says as soon as he clipped on to climb the Totem Pole in 2016, 18 years after his accident, his climber brain kicked into gear.
“I just knew that I had a job to do … Further up, I touched the hole where the rock had fallen from and further up again, clambering onto that ledge, I could hear Celia screaming at me in my mind.
“So, it was a very emotional climb for me. From that day on, I really have found new strength and I really, really don't fear. What I've taken from that climb really is just don't sweat the small stuff 'cause life is too short.”
Climbing for Pritchard is about finding true meaning and that’s what drew him to it in the first place.
“With my parents splitting up, as many parents split up, I went off the rails and started setting the mowers around where I lived on fire and drinking from an early age, getting drunk and shoplifting,” Pritchard says of his early days before being introduced to rock climbing.
“Then when I was 15, a teacher took a group of us bad lads rock climbing and I found, for the first time, I was actually good at something and that's when my life kind of changed wholly for the better.”
On 1 July, Pritchard will be traversing 237km across the Tjoritja/West MacDonnell Ranges, in the Northern Territory, along with four others with a disability or disabling condition.
Photo: supplied
“It's one of the most iconic and maybe arduous tracks in the world.”
He is also a champion for diversity and inclusion of people with disabilities, who he says experience lots of discrimination in society.
“Since becoming disabled, almost 25 years ago now, I've come up against amazing discrimination which I never thought was even a thing until I experienced it, including getting actually attacked, physically attacked.
“But at the same time [it is] essentially quite an exciting time to be a person with a disability, because it's our time; we've had civil rights, we've had marriage equality and gender equality and now it really is time for people with diverse abilities.”
Paul Pritchard is speaking at the Mountain Film Festival in Wanaka, Queenstown and online, running between 24 June and 2 July.
