Stroke's devastating impact on Yorkshire mountaineer who has ventured to places no one has been to before

That love has seen him make the first ascent of peaks including the south face of Himalayan mountain Yogeshwar and Dunglung Khangri in the Indian Karakorum. These days, however, his climbing opportunities are limited - focused on a climbing wall in Harrogate, with adaptations for his post-stroke disabilities.

Malcolm’s life changed dramatically in August 2020. He was up in Scotland, staying with climbing partner and fellow Yorkshireman Simon Yearsley and the pair were enjoying a long weekend of hill-running and climbing in the Cairngorms. There was no warning to Malcolm of what was about to occur.

When he woke up the next morning, the then 55-year-old suddenly found it was a struggle to stand up. “I felt puzzled at how to get out of bed, get dressed, go to the bathroom and put in my contact lenses and walk to the dining room," he recalls. "It all seemed like an insurmountably complex task. I got out of bed and collapsed on the floor in the hall."

Simon and his wife Sarah were able to recognise signs of stroke in Malcolm using the FAST test (facial weakness, arm weakness, speech problems - time to call 999) and called the emergency services. The next thing Malcolm knew, he was in an ambulance and on his way to Ninewells Hospital in Dundee. There, he would spend the next three weeks.

On day three, he deteriorated rapidly with swelling on his brain and found himself in intensive care after life-saving surgery to remove part of his skull. When he finally returned to North Yorkshire, another three months in hospital awaited - and a long and continuing road of rehabilitation began.

Though Malcolm could talk after the stroke, he was left confused and had difficulty swallowing. His vision was blurred and he had no use of his left side of the body. At first he was "in denial" about the magnitude of his disability, but when he returned to his home, near Thirsk, using a wheelchair, and wearing a surgical helmet, it began to sink in. It dawned on him the freedom and independence that he had lost.

“I’ve clawed back a bit of activity over nearly three years," says Malcolm, a clinical psychologist in Teeside and North Yorkshire with the Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust. "My physical abilities were massively limited, especially compared to what I used to be able to do. I used to be a mountaineer, going off every couple of years to climb in Himalaya. In normal weeks, my wife Donna and I would be outside everyday, cycling, or running or climbing or something. To lose all that is heartbreaking.”

The impact for Donna has been tough too. She has pushed to one side her training as a triathlete to support her husband, who needs "virtually 24-hour care". “We do go outside now but the horizons have really shrunk," she says. “I think it’s the loss of freedom and spontaneity [that's hardest to deal with]. You can't just go out to a shop and get something. That freedom of running on the moors has gone. We live in a beautiful part of the country and we try to get out within our capabilities but the spontaneity and freedom has gone...It’s been shocking, it’s devastating, and it still is everyday."

Malcolm’s love of the outdoors began as a child. Growing up in Great Ayton, his parents would take him out each weekend, walking or scrambling in the local countryside. He began climbing whilst he was a schoolboy but his focus turned to caving and cave diving when a student at Leeds University.

In the 1980s and 1990s, he explored passages in the Yorkshire Dales where no one had been before. "Cave exploring is probably the only completely genuine exploration left on the planet, aside from deep ocean, because people have been everywhere else,” he reflects.

During a trip to Ben Nevis in his university days, Malcolm met a group of climbers, including friend Simon. “At that point I was lucky to hook up with a load of people who were really knowledgeable and skilled in climbing and that took me off in a whole direction - winter climbing,” he says.

Nowadays, Malcolm is treading perhaps the hardest path to date, working with rehabilitation specialists and neuro-physiotherapists to try to regain some independence and improve his quality of life. For Malcolm that means becoming more active again. He has set his sights on being able to walk without a stick and proudly speaks of the "battle wound" scars he has gained from his first sessions at the climbing wall.

Now 58, three years on from his stroke, he is planning to undertake his own triathlon to celebrate how far he has come. He hopes to walk a moorland route, swim in the sea off the Yorkshire coastline, and cycle around an off-road circuit in York.

Both he and Donna are grateful for the support they've received from Montane clothing and equipment brand, who have sponsored Malcolm for a number of years and are still backing him. They are also thankful for the Move Mountains for Malcolm fundraiser, set up after his stroke to help cover the costs of ongoing recovery rehabilitation and any equipment he now needs to access the outdoors.

“I’ve learnt, from the partial loss of it, that my love for the outdoor world is profound and fundamental to who I am,” Malcolm says. “I may not be up a mountain, but the trees and birds in our garden and village still give me great joy.”

Visit gofundme.com/f/move-mountains-for-malcolm