Jim Perrin

Jim Perrin (born 1947) is an English rock climber and travel writer.


 * "So his love of the rocks is not mystic or spiritual, as it has been for many of the more cereberal climbers, but is something more elemental and introspective. For my mind the best writing in this book is not to be found in its celestial passages of fancy, but in its exact nerve-tangling accounts of rock-climbing. Perrin knows a lot about the effects of LSD – he considers it “one of the most valuable and educative influences of my life” – and he believes the flow of adrenalin that rock-climbing produces is akin to the powers of acid. “The colours suddenly coruscate”, as he wrote long ago, “shadows gape, weak rays of the sun flare violently, explode…The black dog, Melancholy, stalks my heel and the sun goes out with a plop”.


 * "Yet just as LSD could act as consolation too, so a day on the rocks seems to leave Perrin the calmer for its perils. He knows well enough how real those perils are – dozens of his friends have died in the practice of their passion. But as the Gaelic poet taught him, there can be joy within sorrow. Or, as the comedian said when asked why he kept hitting himself, “it’s so nice when you leave off”."
 * - Catastrophe turned into a work of art - Click On Wales, December 25th, 2010.