Paul Pritchard's Website

The Longest Climb will be launched in Hobart
Thursday the 13th of October 2005
The Hobart Bookshop, Salamanca Square

This sequel to the Totem Pole, details the epic road back to the mountains. Mount Kenya, Djebel Toubkal, Federation Peak and Kilimanjaro all feature.

Excerpt from Chapter 6 'Travails with a Mule':

How I would have relished the pain of a thousand metre slag-heap, the burning that I knew so well, like my muscles were on fire. How I would have cherished the freezing cold in the early morning, the dry thirst in my throat as we ascended, the glare as we contemplated the horizon of late morning, from up high. I would have given my right arm, literally, to climb to the summit of Jebel Toubkal. It only got in the way anyway. Continue by pressing the button below:

Deep Play was the first of Paul's books. Subtitled 'A Climber's Odyssey; from Llanberis to the Big Walls' and published in 1997, it received excellent reviews and won the Boardman/Tasker prize for Mountain Literature.

Reviewer: Hangdog from New Mexico
Incredible book, I'm brusing up on aid climbing, I'm reading up on big walls, I'm feeling confident leading out on my pro. Well written, beatifuly written, great spirited, motivational. Extreme to the max. One of the best Christmas presents I'v ever gotten

The Totem Pole tells the story of Paul's fateful round-the-world climbing trip which ended in disaster on Friday 13th February 1998. The Totem Pole also won the Boardman/Tasker Prize in 1999, along with the Grand Prize at the 1999 Banff mountain book festival.

Reviewer: A reader from Cambridge, UK
This is the story of a man who was at the pinnacle of his career in the morning, and in the afternoon was lapsing in and out of consciousness, fighting for his life on a sea-swept ledge on a remote Tasmanian sea stack. The account follows the events of that Friday 13th an subsequent memories of the Tasmanian hospital, journey home, and painful experiences during rehabilitation in Clatterbridge.

Here is an extract from the 'Totem Pole', telling the story Friday 13th February 1997, the accident,and rescue, followed by sections of the Clatterbridge Diaries, written in the neuro-rehabilitation unit on the Wirral, and reminiscences of the eventual return to Tasmania and the Totem Pole exactly a year after the accident. The second button is to read an unpublished essay: Writing as Catharsis. Choose a button to click: