Endurance walker Paddy comes to the aid of climber while setting record in Snowdon

IT SEEMS like setting national endurance records is not enough for Paddy Doyle, who helped rescue a fellow climber during one of his challenges.

While he was braving freezing weather on Snowdon as he set about making a new national record for the Three Peaks Challenge, he found 26-year-old Chris Harbour, who seemed close to hypothermia as he staggered about in a 70-mile-an-hour blizzard.

It turned out that the distressed man had decided to carry on when his friends had turned back.

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But he’d left his survival pack in their bus and lost not only his way but his all-important gloves.

Paddy, 46, who lives in Balsall Common with his partner Deborah and baby daughter Tabitha, said: “Suddenly the times for the record didn’t matter - I had to sit this lad down and give him some warm clothing and get some hot food inside him.

“After that we had to keep moving and make our way down the mountain together.

“He was shocked and shivering and seemed very close to hypothermia to me.

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“Fortunately I managed to find his friends, who were all from Norfolk, and advised them to take him to a doctor.”

Even with the delay to his descent, Paddy, who runs security courses at Coventry’s Henley College, still completed the Snowdon part of his challenge carrying 40lbs in four hours 28 minutes, using the difficult Pyg track on the way up and Llanberis on the way down where he found Chris.

His overall times may not be the very best he might have achieved - but with the routes used and size of backpacks carried, Paddy has received confirmation he now holds a new Three Peaks’ record.

The ex-paratrooper is always a hard act to follow and on April 28 he scrambled up and down Ben Nevis in Scotland in five hours 54 minutes carrying a 45lb pack.

The next day he tackled Scafell Pike in the Lake District in four hours nine minutes, carrying a 50lb pack.