From
The Washington Post. In the picture, Dan Nevins, a former US Army sergeant injured in Iraq, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with two other amputees. The trek was part of the Warfighter Sports Challenge for disabled veterans.
WASHINGTON — When US Army Sergeant Neil Duncan got taken apart in the highlands of Afghanistan in 2005 — his vehicle ran over a buried explosive, and it “blew up right under me’’ — he really was not picturing life without his legs.
Five years later, the double amputee called from a hotel in Arusha, Tanzania. His arms ached; so did his stumps.
He and two other former soldiers, three men with one leg between them, had just come down from summiting 19,340-foot Mount Kilimanjaro.
You read correctly: Three soldiers, one leg, a mountain climb.
“I tried this last year and just didn’t make it,’’ Duncan said. “. . . I learned that if you take a bunch of amputees and you want to put them on top of a mountain, there are a lot of things you need to think about.’’
The trio of Duncan (26, from Minnesota, now in college in Colorado) and former Army sergeants Dan Nevins (39, lost both legs in Iraq, native of California) and Kirk Bauer (62, lost one leg in Vietnam, lives in Ellicott City, Md.) made their six-day ascent as part of the Warfighter Sports Challenge, a series of seven extreme events for permanently disabled veterans.
It includes races such as a 26-mile desert run, a 100-mile bike ride, and a 90-mile team event that features downhill skiing, kayaking, and mountain biking. It is run by Disabled Sports USA, a nonprofit based in Rockville, Md., that offers sports-as-therapy programs for soldiers and civilians nationwide.
Its Wounded Warrior Disabled Sports Project began in 2003 and focuses on permanently disabled veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Participation in the program, — which uses donations to pay for fees, travel, and equipment for the veterans — is limited to soldiers who have lost limbs or eyesight or have suffered serious brain or spinal cord injuries. More than 3,000 have taken part.
“Sports is the tool to rebuild their confidence after they’ve been banged up and blown up,’’ said Bauer, executive director of Disabled Sports and overseer of the Warfighter series, which began this year. “We put together this team, with veterans from three different wars and two generations, to show the potential of wounded warriors.’’
The group made the Kilimanjaro trek with a guide who had experience helping disabled climbers. Kilimanjaro, though towering above the clouds, is not a technical peak, meaning that it can be climbed by walking and scrambling over rocks and boulders. The group summited last week, though it was grueling.
Bauer’s computerized prosthetic leg, which automatically adjusts for differing terrains, “froze up’’ above 15,000 feet, he said, forcing him to make the rest of the climb using it as a peg leg. On the way down, he switched to his backup, low-tech prosthetic leg; attached with suction, it kept falling off.
Duncan, using two prosthetic legs, had to get down on all fours to traverse some rocky stretches. Nevins developed high-altitude sickness after reaching the peak and had to be rushed down on a stretcher.
“The climb beat the hell out of our prosthetics,’’ Bauer said. “But what we’ve found is that these events, these challenges, really get these guys motivated.’’
Ivan Castro, 43, an Army captain, knows that firsthand. He was grievously injured and blinded by a mortar round in Afghanistan in 2006.
“The only thing I knew about the blind,’’ said Castro, now a recruiter stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C., “was that they walked with a cane. Or a dog. I didn’t know the blind could run.’’
Castro has gone on to participate in several Warfighter events. This spring, he ran in the annual Bataan Memorial Death March, featuring a 26-mile course over rocks, sand, and broken terrain in New Mexico. He runs by holding a shoelace in one hand while a guide runs beside him, holding the other end of the lace and describing the terrain.
“They let us go out there and tear it up like everyone else’’ he said.
From The Washington Post. In the picture, Dan Nevins, a former US Army sergeant injured in Iraq, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with two other amputees. The trek was part of the Warfighter Sports Challenge for disabled veterans.