On September 30, 2009, just two days after his 41st birthday, Chris Waddell reached the summit of Mt. Kilamanjaro. And he did it without ever using his legs. Now, this Paralympic athlete aims to heal and inspire others through the story of his ascent and through his foundation, One-Revolution. With an orthopedist on his climbing team and a venture capitalist in biotechnology as the President of One-Revolution, Waddell hopes to combine science with social change. We may not have the technology to “cure” paralysis due to spinal injuries, but as Waddell points out, there is still plenty of work we can do to help improve life for those in wheelchairs.
“How do average people achieve extraordinary things?” asks Waddell. “I think I was able to do that on the mountain, and hopefully that flips the paradigm on its head and forces people to look at limitations in a different way. I, as an average guy, climbed the tallest mountain in Africa. Hopefully that forces people to look at what it means to be in a wheelchair a little differently. We’re not limited by nearly as much as people want to assume.”
Chris Waddell has lived his life above and beyond his limitations. In a skiing accident during college, he fractured his T-10 and T-11 vertebrae leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. “I just wanted to get better, ” says Waddell. “The alternative was feeling like life was over at 20 years old. That wasn’t really appealing to me.” It wasn’t long before Waddell headed back to the slopes, eventually winning 12 medals as a Paralympic skier.
Ascending to New Heights
Going downhill on a monoski requires plenty of skill, but climbing up Mt. Kilamanjaro was a whole different challenge. Waddell completed the climb with the help of a specially designed four-wheel hand cycle. He affectionately calls this vehicle “Bomba, ” which means “cooler than cool” in Swahili slang.
Some climbers call Mt. Kilamanjaro a “walkable” mountain, but, as Waddell points out, “‘Walkable’ for me is significantly more challenging than it is for you. The mountain is severely uphill—you gain 13, 000 feet from the base to the summit, in about 25 miles. And it took a lot of technical moves for me to get up and over rocks that you would just step over.”
Chris Waddell/Mike Stoner
Personally, I’m almost in awe of what I did in terms of the bulk of work that I was able to do: nine hours a day of pedaling uphill. It’s not something that I want to do tomorrow, but it’s nice to know that I have the ability to do that. And I think the message applies to just about everyone, not just specifically to me as someone with a disability: how do we achieve something that we think is impossible?
Chris Waddell/Mike StonerIn answer to his question, it took friends’ support, careful planning, and a feat of engineering to make the impossible possible. Dave Penney, who had been a bike mechanic during the birth of mountain bikes, helped Waddell modify his hand cycle from an original three-wheeled vehicle designed by One-Off Titanium, Inc. “It is so fulfilling to be able to go a lot of places that you couldn’t go otherwise, ” says Waddell. “The idea of going into production with this vehicle and opening up a whole new world to people is really appealing.” As part of his current work with his foundation, Waddell and his team are in discussion with a lobbyist in Washington, DC, about possibly obtaining government appropriations for producing more of these hand cycles. Waddell explains that especially with disabled veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, there are so many people who could benefit from this kind of vehicle and support.
The One-Revolution foundation is still working on a hand cycle model for developing countries, but the team has already helped in other ways. “We’ve donated wheelchairs and cycles to people in Tanzania, and now we’re making a feature-length documentary film on our work and the climb. We’re looking to create social change. We’re trying to effectively leverage what we’ve done on the mountain to move forward.”
Bringing Focus to the Foundation
If Chris Waddell is the face and the voice of One-Revolution, his long-time friend Bob More is the engine that keeps the foundation on track. “The good part is that there is a lot of opportunity to make a difference, ” says More. “The bad part is also that there is a lot of opportunity to make a difference. There are so many problems out there…you have to just take one thing at a time.”
Bob More first met Chris Waddell in college when their ski and soccer teams brought them into the same fraternities. Then, about ten years ago, they reconnected when they discovered they were almost neighbors in Parks View, Utah. Now More travels back and forth between Utah and California where he works for Frazier Health Care as a venture capitalist in biotechnology.
When Waddell asked More to be the President of One-Revolution, More couldn’t refuse. “I decided to take the position because I’m a big believer in Chris and what Chris is doing. I love working in the medical community, and helping to treat people is very meaningful for me. My biggest role at One-Revolution is helping to provide focus. I make sure that we’re focused on accomplishing things, not trying to do too much, and doing one thing at a time. And I try to make sure that what we do, we do it well.”
And on what, exactly, is Bob More focused? “With spinal surgery, ” he says, “we haven’t cracked the code as far as reconnecting nerve tissue, but there are a lot of ancillary devices that I think make life better for every type of patient. However, I don’t think the infrastructure is built to commercialize and deliver technology from the lab to the end user particularly well. It’s a long, difficult process. There are two levers you can push on. You can push on the technology, and there is a lot of great funding going into research to develop new products. But there is also the dissemination of that technology, and you can make a huge difference there. For example, the access that people have in Africa to technology is antiquated at best.”
Social Change Abroad and at Home
Both More and Waddell hope the climb up Mt. Kilimanjaro and their documentary film will help bring attention to the need for greater technological access in the developing world. They also hope to change the perceptions that wheelchair-bound people are bound by countless limitations. And for Waddell, this isn’t a challenge that only exists in the developing world.
“Some of what we’re looking at, ” says Waddell, “is the assumption that everything is fine here in the U.S., that we have a positive American sensibility and a variety of options open to us. But I think that some of the perceptions still exist, and the perceptions are that paralyzed people have limited to no ability. And I think those perceptions are things that people in Tanzania are sometimes more receptive to changing than people in the U.S.”
We’re all bound by our limitations, ” concludes Waddell. “But most of those limitations are the way in which we chose to see them.
