Norman Croucher

Norman Croucher is a mountain climber who, despite being a double amputee with two prosthetic legs below the knee, set out to climb Cho Oyu, one of the world's 14 mountains which exceed 8,000 metres.

Early life

Born in 1941 and educated at Redruth Grammar School, both of his legs were severed below the knee by a train in 1960 after he collapsed in a drunken stupor and fell down an embankment onto a railway line in Wiltshire. He subsequently trained to be a teacher but was still determined to pursue his love of mountaineering in spite of his disability.

He became the first person fitted with artificial limbs to walk the 900 miles from John O'Groats to Lands End in 1969 which he claimed also hardened his stumps for subsequent mountain climbing.

Mountaineering

Six months after the 900 mile walk to Lands End he climbed the Jungfrau and the Mönch mountains in Switzerland and in 1972 he scaled the treacherous west flank of the Eiger. Two years later he also conquered the Matterhorn. He has climbed many other mountains, including peaks in the Himalayas and these are comprehensively listed on his official website.

His artificial legs are made from aluminium, with a plastic "flexible foot" which enables him to wear mountain boots or fit crampons. Writing about him, Chris Bonington was quoted as stating "There is no one like him, his extraordinary achievements have earned him a place in climbing history."

Awards and Motivational Speaking

Twice voted Association of Disability and Rehabilitation 'Man of the Year' -in 1971 and 1978 - he was also awarded an OBE for his voluntary work with the disabled in 1977. In 1979 he was chosen from nominees from 121 countries as one of only three people in the world to receive an International Award for Valour in Sport. He was the subject of the BBC TV programme This Is Your Life in May 1976 and he is also available as a powerful Motivational Speaker for both company events and after dinner speeches.

Croucher also helps demoralised former employees come to terms with redundancy and to find a positive way of dealing with the new flexibility in their lives. "When my false leg broke as a result of metal fatigue, it could have been seen as a downer. Instead, I had the satisfaction of climbing 5,200ft with just one leg. The incident also prompted me to get a designer to make a better kind of leg for me when I got back down so I learnt that setbacks can prove useful, and that's the most important thing I try to get other people to understand."

In popular culture

In an early episode of the American TV series Lost, John Locke incorrectly identifies Croucher as having climbed Mt Everest, a feat later accomplished by New Zealand mountaineer and double amputee Mark Inglis.

Literature

• Croucher, Norman; Tales of many mountains. Amanda Press 1989 ISBN 0-9514337-0-9
• Croucher, Norman: Legless but Smiling. An Autobiography. Charnwood 2002. ISBN 0-7089-9336-2
• Funk, Gaby: Mit Prothesen auf die Berge der Welt. Der britische Bergsteiger Norman Croucher. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 9.11.2006, p. 71. Online (German).

External links

• Norman Croucher, mountain climber and motivational speaker - His official site

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Name	Croucher, Norman
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Date of birth	1941
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