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The Longest Climb: A Memoir of Love, Mountaineering, and Healing
An inspiring, moving, and unblinking view of a battered climber who refuses to turn his back on the mountains. Born in Bolton, England, Paul Pritchard started climbing when he was 16 years old. In time, he became one of the foremost British climbers of the 1980s and 1990s, climbing difficult routes across the United Kingdom and around the world, including the East Face of Central Tower in Torres del Paine, Patagonia, the first ascent of the West Face of Mount Asgard on Baffin Island, Trango Tower in northern Pakistan, and multiple attempts on the then-unclimbed Shark's Fin on Meru Peak, in the Indian Himalayan region. On Friday, February 13, 1998, Paul's life was dramatically altered when he was struck in the head by a falling boulder while climbing the Totem Pole, a slender sea stack off the coast of Tasmania. He received a traumatic head injury and was left suffering from hemiplegia, which has robbed his right side of movement and continues to play tricks with his speech and memory. A remarkable story that highlights life's surprising gifts and crucial lessons, The Longest Climb chronicles Paul's inspiring journey back to life and reminds us all that “When we spend time in the mountains, we do not escape from our woes. We come home and learn how to accept them.”
288 pages, Paperback
Published April 16, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 14, 2024
An interesting story written by Paul Pritchard who had a traumatic brain injury resulting in hemiplegia. He recount his recover not only physically but mentally and emotionally. Paul pushes himself to new limits trying to explore the outdoors in different ways while overcoming physical limits. It's really interesting listening to his stories about not only being disabled and an outdoorsman, but how he is treated as such. It really brought new light to me as a climber and a person about what taking risks look like, how we treat others, and how we deal with our own personal battles. I really enjoyed hearing his perspective on life and climbing and disability.
July 13, 2024
Paul Pritchard is a climber, a diversity and inclusion educator, and an accomplished author. His first book, Deep Play, won the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature in 1997 and his second, The Totem Pole, won the Boardman Tasker and the grand prize at the Banff Mountain Book Competition, held in conjunction with the famous film festival, in 1999. When his 2005 book, The Longest Climb, was republished here in North America this year, I immediately said I wanted to review it when asked.
The 2005 edition was published by Robinson with the subtitle Back from the Abyss. The 2024 edition from Rocky Mountain Books is A Memoir of Love, Mountaineering, and Healing. After reading it, and having gotten to know Pritchard through social media and direct messages, the newer subtitle is a more appropriate one for readers. The former subtitle is overly dramatic and less soft than the book actually comes across, though when he wrote it and when Robinson published it, the title had a shelf life of relevancy. Rocky Mountain Books' change was smart and I am pleased with the Oxford comma (which, if my colleagues at work read this, will roll their eyes at me pointing that out. So there's that.)
The Longest Climb: A Memoir of Love, Mountaineering, and Healing was Pritchard's first book after his life-altering climbing accident on the Totem Pole in Tasmania in 1998. He incurred a traumatic head injury that left him paralyzed on his right side. He retells the story of coming home from rehab, discovering cycling, trying golf, diving, and pushing his limits on hiking up Jebel Toubkal and Kilimanjaro. During this journey, I am told that I am a TAB, which is a Temporarily Able Body, or said another way, a non-disabled human. I am given a new perspective on what prejudice toward disabilities means, and the urge inside many of us that keeps us going even when someone says it's pointless because it is supposed to be impossible.
Before his injury, Pritchard was a well known climber embedded in the niche community. Despite earning his way in, like many climbers that aren't pursuing the next route or summit, he didn't feel like he was part of the community. Even when he want to the American Alpine Club dinner he was recognized more for his injury than his exploits. Later, as Pritchard grew in new skills and started plodding up Wales hills, he experienced resentment to the others around him going up too, also taking easier paths, including babies and the elderly. Hadn't he earned more privilege. But a new sense was revealed to him that everyone belonged, and his heart grew for humanity.
Pritchard, as I learned in Deep Play, came from a tough upbringing and was quite rough himself. However, as he grew through climbing his heart increasingly opened up. After rehab, he learned that asking for help, often after he got himself into trouble from attempting to be independent, became a way to let go of his control freely and embrace the world through others. For Pritchard, not asking for help had kept him from community and left him unknowingly aloof. When he started asking for help, he didn't feel alone and could express greater and greater amounts of gratitude and appreciation.
Making good decisions has always been a challenge for Pritchard. In Deep Play he took an unroped leap off his school stairs. In this book, he injured his elbow and it was at risk of infection, right before completing a life goal and swimming in the Great Barrier Reef. The doctor said do not swim, and he did anyway. The consequences took days to recover from, partly because he refused to pause life and address it. He gets extremely graphic, and my wife and kids would have ran out of the house as if their hair was on fire, had they read it too. I took pity on him through the ordeal and sympathized in some but not others. I love Paul, but he's stubbornly foolish at times.
The Longest Climb culminates in two mountain climbs (significant journeys trekking and hiking) in Africa, and Pritchard does an excellent job of showing how he felt and his decisions along the way. On Jebel Toubkal, Pritchard falls ill and his partners continue up. Here was a longueur about the climb and his life since being injured and meeting his wife and caretaker, Jane, who was back home. He knows, like everything else in his life, his strength and patience are going to have to come from within.
Overall, I feel I grew from reading Pritchard's story of recovery. I knew it previously, but not the immersive detail from this book. Through it all, I feel stronger. He quoted Helen Keller: "Life is either daring adventure or nothing." He was emphatic through his actions and this book that the worst thing he could do was waste the rest of his life. His sense of insecurity generated a response that constantly pushed him to be more, and it taught him new lessons and perspectives, such as community from asking for help.
The Longest Climb was easier to read and follow than Deep Play. If you read my review of the latter, I said that the language was disjointed but surprisingly descriptive. This new book may have been edited more or differently to overcome that as a criticism.
The book made me feel uncomfortable many times, and even grossed out over his elbow injury before his dive. It was incredibly heartwarming and the new subtitle is true. I give the book a high score for the author and his story, but it's not a climbing story. It's a story of a climber's recovery and life with a growing heart and overcoming uncertainty and insecurity. Reading it will change you, so be prepared.
For me, I now look at disabled acquaintances as people and am more cautious in how I can help them with dignity and respect. I also look at my time for myself, my wife, and my kids with a new sense of respect and willingness to say yes, let's do that. I don't know how complicated it will be should I not be physically able ever again.
This review first appeared on THE SUBURBAN MOUNTAINEER at SuburbanMountaineer.com
The 2005 edition was published by Robinson with the subtitle Back from the Abyss. The 2024 edition from Rocky Mountain Books is A Memoir of Love, Mountaineering, and Healing. After reading it, and having gotten to know Pritchard through social media and direct messages, the newer subtitle is a more appropriate one for readers. The former subtitle is overly dramatic and less soft than the book actually comes across, though when he wrote it and when Robinson published it, the title had a shelf life of relevancy. Rocky Mountain Books' change was smart and I am pleased with the Oxford comma (which, if my colleagues at work read this, will roll their eyes at me pointing that out. So there's that.)
The Longest Climb: A Memoir of Love, Mountaineering, and Healing was Pritchard's first book after his life-altering climbing accident on the Totem Pole in Tasmania in 1998. He incurred a traumatic head injury that left him paralyzed on his right side. He retells the story of coming home from rehab, discovering cycling, trying golf, diving, and pushing his limits on hiking up Jebel Toubkal and Kilimanjaro. During this journey, I am told that I am a TAB, which is a Temporarily Able Body, or said another way, a non-disabled human. I am given a new perspective on what prejudice toward disabilities means, and the urge inside many of us that keeps us going even when someone says it's pointless because it is supposed to be impossible.
Before his injury, Pritchard was a well known climber embedded in the niche community. Despite earning his way in, like many climbers that aren't pursuing the next route or summit, he didn't feel like he was part of the community. Even when he want to the American Alpine Club dinner he was recognized more for his injury than his exploits. Later, as Pritchard grew in new skills and started plodding up Wales hills, he experienced resentment to the others around him going up too, also taking easier paths, including babies and the elderly. Hadn't he earned more privilege. But a new sense was revealed to him that everyone belonged, and his heart grew for humanity.
Pritchard, as I learned in Deep Play, came from a tough upbringing and was quite rough himself. However, as he grew through climbing his heart increasingly opened up. After rehab, he learned that asking for help, often after he got himself into trouble from attempting to be independent, became a way to let go of his control freely and embrace the world through others. For Pritchard, not asking for help had kept him from community and left him unknowingly aloof. When he started asking for help, he didn't feel alone and could express greater and greater amounts of gratitude and appreciation.
Making good decisions has always been a challenge for Pritchard. In Deep Play he took an unroped leap off his school stairs. In this book, he injured his elbow and it was at risk of infection, right before completing a life goal and swimming in the Great Barrier Reef. The doctor said do not swim, and he did anyway. The consequences took days to recover from, partly because he refused to pause life and address it. He gets extremely graphic, and my wife and kids would have ran out of the house as if their hair was on fire, had they read it too. I took pity on him through the ordeal and sympathized in some but not others. I love Paul, but he's stubbornly foolish at times.
The Longest Climb culminates in two mountain climbs (significant journeys trekking and hiking) in Africa, and Pritchard does an excellent job of showing how he felt and his decisions along the way. On Jebel Toubkal, Pritchard falls ill and his partners continue up. Here was a longueur about the climb and his life since being injured and meeting his wife and caretaker, Jane, who was back home. He knows, like everything else in his life, his strength and patience are going to have to come from within.
Overall, I feel I grew from reading Pritchard's story of recovery. I knew it previously, but not the immersive detail from this book. Through it all, I feel stronger. He quoted Helen Keller: "Life is either daring adventure or nothing." He was emphatic through his actions and this book that the worst thing he could do was waste the rest of his life. His sense of insecurity generated a response that constantly pushed him to be more, and it taught him new lessons and perspectives, such as community from asking for help.
The Longest Climb was easier to read and follow than Deep Play. If you read my review of the latter, I said that the language was disjointed but surprisingly descriptive. This new book may have been edited more or differently to overcome that as a criticism.
The book made me feel uncomfortable many times, and even grossed out over his elbow injury before his dive. It was incredibly heartwarming and the new subtitle is true. I give the book a high score for the author and his story, but it's not a climbing story. It's a story of a climber's recovery and life with a growing heart and overcoming uncertainty and insecurity. Reading it will change you, so be prepared.
For me, I now look at disabled acquaintances as people and am more cautious in how I can help them with dignity and respect. I also look at my time for myself, my wife, and my kids with a new sense of respect and willingness to say yes, let's do that. I don't know how complicated it will be should I not be physically able ever again.
This review first appeared on THE SUBURBAN MOUNTAINEER at SuburbanMountaineer.com
June 17, 2024
[Review for Tasmanian Times]
Paul Pritchard, mountaineer, charity fundraiser, disability awareness educator, Australian of the Year 2017, and author of The Longest Climb, must be a lovely fella. No one could put his kind, loyal and generous friends and family through so much and not be incredibly nice – because to do what he did, after his awful accident, and needing the teeth-gritting support of everyone around you, you’d need to be very well-loved.
You’d also need a steely sangfroid to quash your own doubts, and those of others, despite the head injury, the hemiplegia, the issues with balance, the near-crippling fear – and all to be amongst the mountains again where the accident happened.
It begs the question: why put yourself through absolute hell to regain a fingernail death-grip on the rocks that damn near killed you?
I’ve climbed a few (small) mountains in the Rockies, Alps and Himalayas, but Pritchard’s career is on a vastly different level, one that only comes with a great deal of obsessive hard work, extensive and unrelenting training, extreme team-planning, and stunning levels of risk – all to find oneself and one’s comrades on top of a very high bit of rock, feeling very, very alive. It comes as something of a surprise to most of the rest of us earth-bound mortals that, “as with all my climbs…the enjoyment and fulfillment…only comes in retrospect when one is safely back on the ground.”
Paul was one of the world’s leading climbers, capable of leading on the most terrifyingly difficult and challenging routes in the most remote places on Earth…
…until, one fateful day, climbing in Tasmania on a ridiculously sheer splinter of rock, the Totem Pole, rising straight up out of the ferocious Southern Ocean, Paul’s life changed forever when a large rock fell onto his head, smashing it open.
The story of how he survived horrific injuries via the narrowest of escapes is only the beginning of the real story – the longest climb from head injury and disability to make a return to – and it makes me wince to say it – climbing mountains. With one side of his body almost fully paralysed, a permanent brain injury, plus a big part of his skull missing, one small fall and it’s all over red rover. Or so you’d think…
The Longest Climb is a memoir of the years since his survival. He relates his time in the rehab centre, making little progress, and watching troubled and grieving visitors come less frequently for his ward mates, who were, so often, parked in front of the television with little to no ability to even change the damn channel.
‘I clung on, waiting interminable hours, sometimes days between visits from friends and family… Recovery from a brain injury is slow. Many people can’t see an end to their anguish, and their resolve to continue battling weakens.’
What to do? Hogging the remote and sinking into depression was an option, but Paul chose, instead, to write his first book, The Totem Pole – a million keystrokes using a single finger. Then he reconnected with his global network of climbing friends and colleagues, and talked them into supporting him stumble, fall, crawl and drag his way back into the hills and mountains.
How hard was that endeavour? I swear, if you removed every reference to falling over, suffering injury after injury, The Longest Climb would be a pamphlet.
All this falling over and getting up again led to charity hikes, trike rides, and climbs, despite the fits, blackouts, difficulty with balance, and not-being-able-to-walk-normally.
He worked with what he had – one arm, one leg, and all those family and friends I mentioned – and he hasn’t stopped achieving, not just for himself, but for everyone living with a disability, or needing to know what that’s like. On the hardship of it all, he references a mate of his, Jamie Andrew, a climber who lost his hands and feet to frostbite, who said: “Constantly being indebted to people isn’t such a bad thing either. It brings you closer, builds bonds.” But this insight is hard-won, and is daily challenged by the reality of other, “abled” people’s assumptions and behaviours toward someone with a visible disability.
For Pritchard, and I suspect for his family and friends, Paul’s apparently awe-inspiring resilience is really the same mad, joyous, yet focused pragmatism required for the most serious of climbs, a love of wild nature he’s never lost.
“What is courageous isn’t the absence of fear, but the ability to just do it scared.”
Useful advice for us all.
Paul Pritchard, mountaineer, charity fundraiser, disability awareness educator, Australian of the Year 2017, and author of The Longest Climb, must be a lovely fella. No one could put his kind, loyal and generous friends and family through so much and not be incredibly nice – because to do what he did, after his awful accident, and needing the teeth-gritting support of everyone around you, you’d need to be very well-loved.
You’d also need a steely sangfroid to quash your own doubts, and those of others, despite the head injury, the hemiplegia, the issues with balance, the near-crippling fear – and all to be amongst the mountains again where the accident happened.
It begs the question: why put yourself through absolute hell to regain a fingernail death-grip on the rocks that damn near killed you?
I’ve climbed a few (small) mountains in the Rockies, Alps and Himalayas, but Pritchard’s career is on a vastly different level, one that only comes with a great deal of obsessive hard work, extensive and unrelenting training, extreme team-planning, and stunning levels of risk – all to find oneself and one’s comrades on top of a very high bit of rock, feeling very, very alive. It comes as something of a surprise to most of the rest of us earth-bound mortals that, “as with all my climbs…the enjoyment and fulfillment…only comes in retrospect when one is safely back on the ground.”
Paul was one of the world’s leading climbers, capable of leading on the most terrifyingly difficult and challenging routes in the most remote places on Earth…
…until, one fateful day, climbing in Tasmania on a ridiculously sheer splinter of rock, the Totem Pole, rising straight up out of the ferocious Southern Ocean, Paul’s life changed forever when a large rock fell onto his head, smashing it open.
The story of how he survived horrific injuries via the narrowest of escapes is only the beginning of the real story – the longest climb from head injury and disability to make a return to – and it makes me wince to say it – climbing mountains. With one side of his body almost fully paralysed, a permanent brain injury, plus a big part of his skull missing, one small fall and it’s all over red rover. Or so you’d think…
The Longest Climb is a memoir of the years since his survival. He relates his time in the rehab centre, making little progress, and watching troubled and grieving visitors come less frequently for his ward mates, who were, so often, parked in front of the television with little to no ability to even change the damn channel.
‘I clung on, waiting interminable hours, sometimes days between visits from friends and family… Recovery from a brain injury is slow. Many people can’t see an end to their anguish, and their resolve to continue battling weakens.’
What to do? Hogging the remote and sinking into depression was an option, but Paul chose, instead, to write his first book, The Totem Pole – a million keystrokes using a single finger. Then he reconnected with his global network of climbing friends and colleagues, and talked them into supporting him stumble, fall, crawl and drag his way back into the hills and mountains.
How hard was that endeavour? I swear, if you removed every reference to falling over, suffering injury after injury, The Longest Climb would be a pamphlet.
All this falling over and getting up again led to charity hikes, trike rides, and climbs, despite the fits, blackouts, difficulty with balance, and not-being-able-to-walk-normally.
He worked with what he had – one arm, one leg, and all those family and friends I mentioned – and he hasn’t stopped achieving, not just for himself, but for everyone living with a disability, or needing to know what that’s like. On the hardship of it all, he references a mate of his, Jamie Andrew, a climber who lost his hands and feet to frostbite, who said: “Constantly being indebted to people isn’t such a bad thing either. It brings you closer, builds bonds.” But this insight is hard-won, and is daily challenged by the reality of other, “abled” people’s assumptions and behaviours toward someone with a visible disability.
For Pritchard, and I suspect for his family and friends, Paul’s apparently awe-inspiring resilience is really the same mad, joyous, yet focused pragmatism required for the most serious of climbs, a love of wild nature he’s never lost.
“What is courageous isn’t the absence of fear, but the ability to just do it scared.”
Useful advice for us all.
April 24, 2026
I didn’t finish it. I thought it would be interesting to read at this point in my life as I’m recovering from surgery. But it didn’t resonate. It read like a series of statements of events linked together in not a particularly interesting way.
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