Peak Experience
Photography: Mike Stoner
Last September, the world watched as Parkite Chris Waddell succeeded in becoming the first paraplegic to summit Africa’s Mt Kilimanjaro unassisted.
A lean and mountain-climber-tan Chris Waddell sits in jeans in his wheelchair at the bottom of a set of rickety stairs. Tonight, he’s attending a meeting of his writing group at a friend’s house in Old Town. The group, 10 years strong, is as close as family—and as blunt.
From the top of the stairs, someone shouts, “Chris! Do you need a hand getting up here?” Another quickly retorts, “No way, man! For Christ’s sake, the guy just climbed Kilimanjaro!” Everyone, including Waddell, bursts out laughing. Then Waddell says with a serene smile, “Actually, I would love some help.” This is perhaps the greatest lesson he learned on one of the world’s tallest freestanding mountains—that it’s OK to ask for help.
Waddell was a ski racer at Vermont’s Middlebury College in 1988 when he suffered a skiing accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. Since then, he’s been on a crusade to prove that people with disabilities can still achieve their dreams. He returned to school a mere two months after the crash and pursued life with vigor, becoming one of the most decorated paraplegic athletes in the world: he has competed in sit-skiing with the U.S. Disabled Ski Team for 11 years, winning a total of 13 medals at 7 Paralympic Games (12 in ski events plus one in track). He’s been named one of People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People,” has appeared on Oprah and Dateline, and has given hundreds of motivational speeches around the world. Waddell founded the organization One Revolution (one-revolution.org), based in Park City, which seeks to gain equality for people with disabilities by removing obstacles in both mobility and public perception. And in April of this year, he was inducted into both the Paralympic Hall of Fame and the National Ski Hall of Fame.
But his trip to Kilimanjaro, a storied inactive volcano that dominates the border region between Tanzania and Kenya in eastern Africa, was perhaps his most public effort so far to demonstrate his conviction that people with disabilities need to be seen and heard. In order to become the first paraplegic to summit Kilimanjaro unassisted (using a custom four-wheel handcycle called “Bomba”), Waddell would need to haul his powerful body one hand crank at a time over slippery scree and dangerous craters, more than 13,000 vertical feet up in the space of almost 30 miles to reach the summit at 19,340 feet.
“It wasn’t so much about conquering the mountain as it was about using myself as a vehicle to effect change,” Waddell explains. “I never wanted the whole thing to be about me. It drew some attention to start a conversation about changing the way our society perceives 600 million disabled people worldwide—to shift perception from low expectation and pity to limitless potential and awe. I want people to see not just the wheelchair. I want them to look beyond that and see the individual.”
The journey took nearly two years to plan, including a frustrating reconnaissance trip, on which Waddell realized that his original handcycle needed major structural changes, and an expedition delay when he got an infection that hospitalized him for weeks. With his documentary film crew, expedition team, trainers and porters, his entourage topped out at about 70. And the eyes of the world’s media were on him. With documentarians filming and CBS News reporters waiting for blow-by-blow progress reports, Waddell got three-quarters of the way up the mountain before he reached a boulder field just below the rim of a volcano that he couldn’t pass by himself.
“I was crushed when I couldn’t get over that one spot by myself,” Waddell admits. “Asking for help threatened the success of the whole project.”
In fact, ever since his injury and through all of his athletic achievements, asking for help hadn’t really been part of his vocabulary, Waddell explains. “When I went back to school two months after my accident,” he says, “I was elevated to Superman status among my friends. That was kind of cool, but it also meant that I wasn’t allowed to have a bad day. People would say, ‘You barely seem disabled.’ ... You’re held to this standard that’s unreasonable. That’s a tough thing to live up to.
“That’s the way the climb went,” Waddell continues. “The whole way along I felt like the whole project could collapse at any moment. There was such a narrow window of opportunity in getting to the top and so many people counting on results. I felt that if I didn’t conquer the mountain myself, I wouldn’t be newsworthy, and then I couldn’t get my message across ... a message for the entire disabled community and a way of thanking all of the people who’ve gone before me and effected change for people with disabilities.”
With Waddell stuck on Africa’s highest peak, expedition team member Dr. Nate Bryan stepped in with advice for his tormented friend: “We’re in this together. If you don’t ask for help, we don’t have a purpose.” Swallowing his pride, Waddell refocused his efforts, and with the help of a winch and boards laid down to help with traction, enthusiastic porters helped Waddell get over the nasty spot, even lifting Bomba over the rocks at one point for about 100 feet. The team members scoffed at Waddell’s worry that he had failed by requiring assistance over 100 feet out of 13,000.
There was no question about whether he’d “done it” when Waddell made the summit on September 30, 2009. The feat was almost all anyone in Park City talked about for days, to say nothing of becoming worldwide news. “The real message that came out of the whole experience for me,” Waddell says, “is that I need people. Nobody does this alone.”
Now, having had time to digest all of the events of the expedition, Waddell uses the mountain as his metaphor. “We’re still at the first hut,” he says, speaking of the work that remains to be done in correcting the public perception of people with disabilities.
The reminders of the obstacles come almost incessantly. “I fell down the stairs a few months ago and heard my fib/tib snap. Even though I couldn’t feel the pain, I knew I’d broken it and had to get myself to the hospital. While I was being checked in, the attendant took my vital signs and then asked me what drugs I was on. When I told her none, she said, ‘Really? For someone in your state? No depression?’ The huge assumption that person made—a medical professional, no less—was not fair, to a whole bunch of people. There’s still a barrier.
“Her comment revealed the misconceptions about disabled individuals that lie just below the surface in our society,” Waddell says. “One Revolution has been trying to minimize obstacles that are created by disability, but now we need to prepare society for people like me who now have opportunities despite their disabilities.”
Even having conquered Kilimanjaro, Waddell has more projects in store. Working with his team on a documentary about the expedition, Waddell has also been inspired to write his first children’s book. And he has created a new educational program for school children called Nametags that focuses on teaching kids how to live without labels and change the way they see themselves and others. He’s also embarking on another journey: this time a 10-month, 30-city tour that will combine the Nametags program with film showings. He hopes to reach 450 schools and 150,000 students around the country.
Don’t be surprised if he ends up visiting twice that number. When you’ve rolled up to the top of the world as Waddell has, there aren’t many mountains you can’t climb.
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