Career
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.
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. In a December 1979 article in the South American Explorer, Crouch wrote about the thermal advantages of not having lower legs during high-altitude ascents: Obviously, keeping your feet warm is a problem in high altitude climbing — but only if you have feet.
While companions war-dance to keep theirs from freezing, I can stand on ice for hours.
Climbing high or in a bivouac, I"m always the joker who doesn"t have cold feet. Croucher concluded his article by noting that there were advantages beyond just being impervious to frozen feet: "I need take no special precautions against hookworms, leeches and short snakes." Croucher, Norman. Tales of many mountains.
