Acting
In October 2014, Steve Wakeford, a sports broadcast editor, fell 70 metres whilst climbing a mountain known as Les Petites Jorasses in the French Alps. It was a fall that required him to be airlifted out of the mountains suffering from a number of serious injuries and resulted in him being temporarily left in a wheelchair - he is lucky to be alive. At the start of a long journey of rehabilitation, he began to ask himself some serious questions - 'Regardless of injury or trauma, why are we drawn to the mountains in the first place? Is risk an essential part of what we do? Perhaps most importantly, why is it that I am planning to climb the same route from which I fell?'
British climber – now resident of Tasmania – Paul Pritchard, was one of the leading climbers and mountaineers of the 1980s and 1990s, renowned for his hard and extremely bold first ascents. In 1998 Paul was abseiling in to climb the Totem Pole in Tasmania when he dislodged a rock with his rope that hit him on the head, leaving him with a severe head injury that he was lucky to survive. The aftermath of the accident left him with hemiplegia, which means he has little feeling or movement in the right side of this body. Despite this disability, Paul’s continued to live a life filled with adventure. Eighteen years later Paul returns to the Totem Pole to find out if he has recovered enough to finish the climb.
In 1986 Steve Berry led an expedition to climb the highest unclimbed peak in the world. It also happens to be the highest peak in Bhutan. Two years of laborious preparations had led up to the attempt to get the climbers on the mountain in the limited weather window between the end of the monsoons and the onset of winter. Their team almost reached the summit but they were driven off by horrendous storms. Due to the climbing restrictions in Bhutan, the mountain remains today as the highest unclimbed peak.
