Winner of the 1997 Boardman Tasker Prize for
Mountain Literature, Paul Pritchard's Deep Play is a
unique, stylish and timeless commentary reflecting the
pressures and rewards of climbing some of the world's
hardest and most challenging rock climbs. Pritchard
started climbing in Lancashire before moving to join the
vibrant Llanberis scene of the mid 1980s, at a time when
the adventurous development of the Dinorwig slate
quarries was in full swing. Many of the new slate routes
were notable for their fierce technical difficulty and
sparse protection, and Pritchard took a full part in
this arcane sub-culture of climbing and at the same time
deployed his skills on the Anglesey sea cliffs to
produce a clutch of equally demanding wall climbs. Born
with an adventurous soul, it was not long before
Pritchard and his friends were planning exotic trips. In
1987, paired with Johnny Dawes, Pritchard made an
epoch-making visit to Scotland's Sron Ulladale to free
its famous aid route, The Scoop. Pritchard and Dawes,
with no previous high altitude experience, then
attempted the Catalan Pillar of Bhagirathi III in the
Garwhal Himalaya in India, a precocious first expedition
prematurely curtailed when Pritchard was hit by
stonefall at the foot of the face. In 1992, Pritchard
and Noel Craine teamed up with the alpinists Sean Smith
and Simon Yates to climb a big wall route on the East
Face of the Central Tower of Paine, Patagonia. Pritchard
followed this with an equally fine first ascent of the
West Face of Mt Asgard on Baffin Island. Other trips -
to Yosemite, Pakistan and Nepal as well as returns to
Patagonia - resulted in a clutch of notable repeats,
first ascents and some failures. The failure list also
included two life threatening falls (one on Gogarth, the
other on Creag Meaghaidh), which prompted the author
into thought-provoking personal re-assessments, in
advance of his later near-terminal accident on The Totem
Pole in Tasmania. A penetrating view of the adventures
and preoccupations of a contemporary player, Deep Play
stands alone as a unique first-hand account of what many
consider to be the last great era in British
climbing.
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