Newcastle man Paul climbs world’s toughest peaks

Newcastle man Paul climbs world’s toughest peaks

1 July 2020

FOR most of us sleeping on a narrow bed suspended hundreds of metres high off El Capitan, California’s famous vertical rock wall in Yosemite Valley, would be utterly fear-inducing.

Not so for mountain guide and expert rock climber Paul Swail, who first discovered his love of mountains growing up in Newcastle at the foot of the Mournes.

For the 38 year-old, it’s the best night’s sleep ever.

“You get the most amazing night’s sleep in one of those,” said Paul, referring to a piece of equipment called a portaledge where rock climbers sleep and eat in during a long climb.

“We spent six days climbing one of the El Cap routes and we didn’t want to get out of our beds in the morning. 

“Yes, we were knackered but it’s the comfiest thing you will ever sleep on. With all the fresh air and seeing the stars at night, when you wake up, all you can see is the ground hundreds of metres below you, it’s just amazing.”

Paul now lives in Chamonix at the foot of Mont Blanc in the French Alps with his English wife, Ellie, and toddler son Luca. Luca was only weeks old when his parents climbed Slieve Donard on a trip home with him safely tucked inside a sling on his father’s chest.

He’s enjoying his time ‘resting’ from his day job of guiding people on challenging climbs of the Alps’ highest peaks of Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn and the Eiger to spend time with his son.

Depending on the mountain, he guides either one or two people up the peaks and safely down again.

Paul explained: “The people who hire me are time poor but money rich. They can afford to employ a mountain guide like me. Doing the Matterhorn and Eiger are much more technical guiding as it on a one to one ratio.

“Mont Blanc is mostly snow and ice and really exposed with some sections of scrambling where with the Matterhorn, you are pretty much on your hands from the start all the way to the top and all the way back down.”

Mont Blanc at 4,804 metres is the high European peak outside Russia and a mountain that Paul has come to know very well. He prefers to take his clients up later during the day, descending near sunset, to avoid the growing numbers of commercial climbers.

Supported by the French government during lockdown from March 12, Paul has been able to return to guiding over the last six weeks but he was still hampered by the fact says that British and Irish people were unable to fly. 

Born in Vancouver to Northern Ireland parents who emigrated to Canada to escape the Troubles, Paul was 12 when the announcement of the first IRA ceasefire came in 1994. A year later the family moved back and decided to settle in Newcastle.

He was one of the first students to attend Shimna Integrated College at its current King Street site in Newcastle and within years Paul showed his love of the outdoors, particularly mountains. 

“My dad and I used to walk in the Mourne mountains,” he said. “I had skied in Canada, but really got into the mountains back home.

“My first experience of rock climbing was being taken to Altnadue Quarry just outside Castlewellan by a family friend and I just loved it.  

“While I had played soccer and done a bit of running for the school, I wasn’t really into sports. It was around my fifth year that I really veered to be more interested in outdoor pursuits. I really didn’t know if I wanted it as a career but after getting into climbing, it did shape what options that I was interested in.”

Paul went on to do a degree in outdoor education at the University of Central Lancashire and made the Tollymore National Outdoor Centre his second home when he returned home during holidays and post-college.

Once he completed college, his time was split between taking climbing and outdoor pursuit courses back home. While working in France, he would ski and climb during the day in the Alps and work in bars at night, with the sole focus of funding trips such as climbing El Capitan twice or climbing in Patagonia.

He went on to become a guide with the International Federation of Mountain Guides Associations, which is the highest recognised mountaineering qualification in the world and the only qualification valid to work outside the UK and Ireland for climbing and off-piste skiing on glaciated terrain.

Paul’s only salaried job to date was as a youth development officer for Mountaineering Ireland for four years from 2010 based out of Tollymore where he taught young climbers the importance of enjoying the mountains responsibly and safely.

Paul said: “I worked every minute I could freelancing to fund the next trip and when I ran out of money, I came back home to work again. Up until my late 20s, I never thought much about the future, it was just living for the moment.

“I’ve never really had a secure income until I had the Mountaineering Ireland job and it allowed me to buy a house in Castlewellan.”

While his responsibility to provide for his family is uppermost in his mind, Paul is not yet finished with his need to climb and explore — although, interestingly, the world’s highest mountain, Everest, is not on his wish list.

“There’s a lifetime of climbs that I would love to do,” said Paul. “I love to go back to Patagonia in Argentina to climb Cerro Torre, which for me is the most beautiful mountain in the world; every climber dreams of standing on top of it.  Or the Blasket Islands in 

northern Canada would be quite high on my list.

“Everest has never appealed to me to go and climb as it’s not very difficult technically now. It’s a challenge due to the seriousness of the weather and acclimatising to the attitude makes an extremely serious mountain because of its height. 

“But I don’t think you need a huge amount of skill to get up Everest and I don’t believe you actually have to be a rock climber. You do need to be fit and to be able to acclimatise your body to altitude and you need to have a lot of money.”

His friend and mentor Dawson Stelfox — who became the first Irish man to ascend Everest on his own in May, 1993 — is something of a trailblazer to Paul.

“I didn’t realise that in 1993, when Dawson made the summit on his own, there were no fixed ropes as there are today, there wasn’t the support from Sherpas and so on,” said Paul.

“That would appeal to me if Everest was like that now, then I would love to go. But I don’t want to and sit and wait in a queue of 300 people to get to the top of the mountain.

“I really like to explore and there would need to be technical challenge to it as well, apart from overcoming the physical challenges and altitude.

“If you were to take El Cap and put it somewhere a bit remote where it would take you a couple of days to get to it and very few people have climbed it, you would have about 1,000 metres of vertical rock to climb. Now that would be really rewarding.”