Crutches, Wheelchairs in the High Sierra : Disabled Rise to Challenge in Wilderness Course Called ‘Go For It’

At 8,000 feet in the High Sierra, disabled adults on crutches and in wheelchairs are pushing through boundaries that would stop most able-bodied folks.

These students on the annual “Go For It” course of Summit Expedition are put through five rigorous days of rappeling, hiking across steep rocks and through thick manzanita, and even fasting.

Sally Krohn, 32, a polio victim, can’t walk without her metal crutches and leg brace. Sandwiched by Summit instructors, she climbed to the top of a 70-degree rock face by using a belaying rope.

It took her three hours to get there.

A Hard Challenge

“I’ve never done anything so hard in my life,” said the breathless Krohn, a small woman with curly blond hair.

“Taking on this challenge and being able to accomplish it just proves that limitations are in the mind. When I get home, I’m going to try water-skiing on my knees.”

Krohn lives near a chain of lakes in northern Wisconsin.

Julie Kelly, 19, crippled by a spine disease at birth, is on her second “Go For It” course. This veteran of the mountains doesn’t even flinch as she rappels down the slippery rock in her wheelchair, secured by five sets of rope.

A strapping instructor bolsters Kelly’s descent, his back a map of straining muscles.

“I can’t” are forbidden words at Summit Expedition’s year-round wilderness school, where staff members, all in their 20s, are skilled in both technical mountaineering and expounding positive thinking.

“Go For It” offers a full range of standard courses, among them trips for fathers and sons, women only, couples and juvenile delinquents.

Tries to Be Brave

Kelly professes to be fearless as she rolls down the mountain in her wheelchair.

“Coming up here, it has built a whole lot of trust for me,” says Kelly, a freckled and frail young woman of 19. “With the instructors’ faith in us, I feel like I can do just about anything.”

Another student, Randy Bradley, 27, makes a dramatic rappel down the mountain alone. At the bottom, his blue eyes radiate out of his flushed face as he gives the thumbs-up sign.

The instructors had shouted “Go Randy!” throughout the descent.

Their guru is Tim Hansel, the former high school teacher who founded Summit in 1970. Hansel, a 6-foot-2 bear of a man, became a believer in the power of a can-do spirit through his recovery from an accident that nearly killed him.

On an ice climb in August, 1974, Hansel’s crampons became encrusted with snow and his self-arrest with an ax failed at 13,000-feet on Palisades Glacier near Yosemite. He flipped over a cornice and landed on the back of his neck five stories below on solid ice.

The fall crushed vertebrae, collapsed spinal discs and shot fragments of bone into his neck. Miraculously, he survived with nearly full movement of his arms and legs.

He then spent a lengthy period in body casts, traction and therapy.

Endures Chronic Pain

But he will never escape the chronic pain that saddles him 13 years later. To make it through a day without agony, Hansel must take large daily doses of aspirin and stronger pain killers.

The diagnosis is permanently fused vertebrae that are causing arthritis. Some doctors predict that the condition will eventually cripple him. Hansel says the decision is his.

“I’m going to fool them. Being miserable is a choice, and I choose otherwise. I really believe that joy and laughter create chemicals in your body that heal you.”

A body in motion stays in motion, he said. “The wilderness forces you to go full tilt. When I’m running at full tilt, I don’t feel the pain as much.”

He was once a champion football player in his hometown of Seattle and at Stanford University. Today he gets stiff playing catch with his two young sons.

He used to push through three 21-day wilderness courses back to back. Now he can withstand only three shorter ones a year.

The pain that won’t go away requires routine visits to a chiropractor who kneads out the fist-sized knots in his neck and back.

Supplies Inspiration

Hansel’s struggle is clearly the inspiration that motivates students on “Go For It,” his favorite course and one he has yet to miss.

With Paul Bunyan legs and a 75-pound pack on his back, he barrels up the mountain without so much as a grimace. His booming laugh is everywhere.

“He knows how to live through pain more than anyone,” said Kay Cornell, a Summit instructor. “It’s a concept we tell our students--’You’ve got to push through the barrier. We know it hurts, but push through it.’ ”

Hansel’s “choose joy” gospel and his turn to God is chronicled in “You Gotta Keep Dancing,” published in 1985 and a best-seller in Christian bookstores. The autobiographical account of the “peace I have discovered inside the pain” has made him popular on the lecture circuit.

Watching Krohn inch her way up the mountain makes Hansel’s clear blue eyes water. He says that’s him out there.

Tapping Spiritual Resources

“Once you reach your physical limits, you have to tap into your spiritual resources. Sally was crying up there, ‘I can’t go on.’ So what did she do? She went on.

“There are days when the pain is so bad that I want to curl up and die. But I’m going until they bury me.”

Summit’s base camp is a rustic log lodge in Bass Lake, a two-hour drive from Fresno. The Summit staff eats and sleeps there communally between courses. The business office operates year-round in San Diego.

Able-bodied students are treated no differently than those on “Go For It.” Everybody is pushed. Nobody is babied.

“We like to call it affectionately ‘breaking someone,’ ” Cornell said. “You have a layer of physical being that protects your spiritual being, and you just drive them hard until they’re physically broke down and they’re exposed to what’s really going on in their lives.”

‘Ultimate Challenge’

Courses run from $250 for the “Go For It” to $1,000 for the 21-day “Ultimate Challenge.” Private contributions account for nearly half the income of the organization, which provides scholarships for students who can’t afford the fees.

“Go For It” was started 11 years ago when the athletic Hansel became handicapped himself.

“Because of my accident, I started to see the world differently. I had spent so much time in the hospital, I identified with a lot of people in there,” he said.

“I began to realize that with some adjustments, the wilderness could be available to students who are physically disabled.”

“Adjustment” means more of everything--ropes, precautions and manpower. There are nearly twice as many instructors as students on “Go For It.”

Hansel started the course with two instructors, one who lost his hands and feet from frostbite after climbing Mt. McKinley, and another who was born with no hands.

No Serious Casualties

Over the years, the course has attracted the blind, students with dwarfism and those without limbs. There have been no serious casualties on “Go For It.”

Students who can’t walk are carried to the campsite and climbing spots on litters. Other instructors carry the wheelchairs.

Summit Expedition stretches one’s physical limits, but the heart of the program is spiritual renewal through the New Testament. Individual Bible study follows breakfast every morning, and Christian songfests conclude the nights.

Instructors are taught to be “servant leaders,” modeled after Jesus.

But Hansel balks at the term “religious” to define his mountaineering ministry. He insists that the group’s goal is “life-style evangelism,” not piety.

“For us, the Christian spirit means we’re called to live full tilt. That God called us to live full tilt,” he bellowed, his words resounding against the rocks.