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Paraplegic Big Wall Climbing

• January 2011
• Climb Travel

Hello everybody,
My name is Nicolas Potard, i m mountain guide and i live in Chamonix, france. I climb a lot in Yosemite and it’s one of my favorite area to climb…
This spring, a really good friend to me, Vanessa, got a dramatic accident… A lot of bad luck… In a very easy and crowdy route in Mont Blanc, she takes a block of ice on her back… It break her “colonne vertebrale” end now she ‘s in a chair for all her life…
Before this accident, Vanessa was a really good alpinist/ climber… Full of energy, totally motived, awesome… I spend one month with her in Indian Creek in fall 2008 and it s a really good memory for me…

But believe it or not, she stay motivate and she keep this light in her eyes when she thinks about mountains. She’s really strong… She ‘s already done swimming, diving;;; she plans to sking this winter…

With her, we talks about , not now, but maybe one day, try le nose on el cap… I really like this route and it can be verry nice to go again with her….

So, i got no ideas how to do it and i m looking for some tips…
Do you know someone who climbed El Cap with a such big handicap?…
What is the stuff i need?
Who can help me?

I said the nose but maybe it’s better with a steeper rout like Zodiac or Tangerine Trip… No problem, i just want to pass a good time with her in this wonderful wall

So if you have time to answears me, it’s nice…
I was thinking to do it maybe next fall or spring 2012
Thanks
Nico

Dear Nico,
It is definitely possible to climb El Cap as a paraplegic. Mark Wellman is the first climber I knew of who has done it, many times. My friend Beth Coats also climbed it with me and Russ Mitrovich, and she had never done a big wall before her accident (but she was an Olympic athlete and an excellent rock climber). Beth’s jumar system was very similar to the one that Mark used, with a small pullup bar attached to the top jug, and a type of protective haulbag to cover her lower body. She used a rocking motion with her lower body, while pulling up on the bar. She is incredibly strong, and you have to be to jug like that. We did the Zodiac, because it is so steep. There were a few vertical sections of wall, and we would actually use our own bodies like a brace, to make her jug line hang free of the wall. The steeper the better for the jugging, in this type of endeavor, is what we found.

Also, getting to the base and getting down from the top are in some ways the hardest parts. You need someone really strong to piggyback Vanessa to the climb and down from the climb, and it’s best to have two extra people to spot them during this. So you should try to get a big group of support, because this should be a completely different team than the wall team, because it’s a lot of work and pressure for both teams. We thought it was really good that we had the 3 of us on the wall together, and then a separate crew for carrying Beth to the base and down the East Ledges while Russ and I carried down the gear.

The final thing is that you will need to be very careful of Vanessa physically, and make sure she is not doing anything injurious. You get more committed as you get higher on the route, and you will have to watch her really closely to make sure she is not pushing past what is reasonable, especially because she will really want to be climbing.

I wrote a story about our ascent of El Cap in my book, called “Four Thousand Pullups,” and it might give you more details about what we did when we climbed it with Beth. It is a great project, and it will definitely be an unforgettable experience for all of you.
Steph