The Longest Climb

For climber Paul Pritchard the biggest challenge he ever faced wasn't a mountain, but the long climb back to life. Not his former life of the 1990s, when he surfed many of the world's most treacherous rock faces. The boulder that crushed him while he was climbing the Totem Pole in Tasmania put a stop to that. His life now is the result of a six-year struggle with hemiplegia and brain injury, slowly reassembling his world physically, emotionally and mentally. Progress is halting and painful, but also triumphant and often blackly humorous. Along the way he charts the small victories, the false hopes the necessary readjustments, and considers the world's perception of disability as he compares experiences with fellow handicapped climbers such as Jamie Andrew on Kilimanjaro - they are united by positive thinking and a refusal to sink into self-pity.