Scot of the Antarctic Paralympian prepares for ‘the ultimate challenge’
Inspirational athlete Karen Darke aims to raise cash for spinal imjuries on her latest global adventure
ON a bumpy track high in the Himalayas, Karen Darke drew to a halt and paused to take in the view.
The impressive landscape, the challenge of simply getting there and the six long months she’d spent in hospital with the news sinking in that she was paralysed from the neck down, were a powerful combination.
She had become the first woman to handcycle across the Himalayas and the moment, with the beauty of the mountains stretching before her, the light air filling her lungs and the knowledge that this world didn’t have to be out of reach because of her new disability, was, she says, the moment among all of her many adventures that means the most.
“It was the first journey after I was paralysed,” recalled Ms Darke, who would go on become a gold and silver medal-winning Paralympian, adventurer, and inspiration for countless others who, having convinced themselves that they couldn’t do something, looked to her and changed their mind.
“I was on this ascent through the Himalayas. At the top of a path I stopped, looked around and thought of getting there against all the odds.
“It was one of those unbelievable moments,” she continued. “I couldn’t believe when I lay in hospital bed that I would be looking at this.
“It was a super profound moment.” She was 21 years old in 1993, a geologist and keen athlete who had already climbed Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn, and won the Swiss KIMM Mountain Marathon, when she tumbled 30 feet down an Aberdeen sea cliff.
Left paralysed
THE accident broke her skull, arms, neck and back – but not her spirit or determination to savour every second of life. Paralysed from the chest down, she left hospital, bought a racechair and set about ticking off an extraordinary series of challenges that would take her to all four corners of the world and Paralympic glory.
It is an exhausting list: she has sea kayaked from Canada to Alaska; skied 600km across the Greenland icecap; and climbed the kilometre-high overhanging rock face of Yosemite’s El Capitan, a fourday climb of 4,000 pull-ups.
She has also handcycled along the Silk Route, the length of Japan, and across Tibet.
Somehow, amid it all, she found time to win silver at the 2012 Paralympics for handcycling, and followed that with taking gold at the Rio games, despite being hit by a car during her training.
She already has an MBE. However, in a few weeks’ time, her remarkable commitment, determination and resilience will be further recognised when she becomes the 15th recipient of the Scottish Award for Excellence in Mountain Culture.
Previous winners of the award, one of the key events of the
Andrew Nisbet and trailblazing polar explorer, Myrtle Simpson.
Ms Darke, who will be speaking at the festival as part of Biking Night, on Saturday, February 19, was nominated by the public and her peers for the award. Winning, she said, took her by surprise. “It is a real honour,” she added. “My soul is rarely peaceful without a mountain in its presence. On becoming paralysed almost 30 years ago it seemed at first that mountains were a thing of the past.
“Thanks to the interesting technology of bikes and skis, and to great friends who have been up for some adventures, mountain landscapes have worked their way even deeper into the fabric of my being,” she said.
Remarkable life
TODAY she is in Spain, training for what will undoubtedly become another of many profound moments in her remarkable life. In December, Ms Darke, 50, from Inverness, will head to the great wilderness of Antarctica. An unforgiving landscape even for those without her devastating disability, she plans to sit-ski from the Antarctic adventure base at Union Glacier to a “new pole”, at 79
It is a place that people in wheelchairs don’t go to – but I want to spread the message about the power of nature
degrees latitude and longitude. Joining her will be Iona Somerville, 20, a graduate of explorer Craig Mathieson’s The Polar Academy which helps specially selected school pupils gain confidence by taking them on a polar expedition.
Ms Somerville, from Edinburgh, drew on the courage and strength the expedition gave her when she was caught up in the horros of the Manchester Arena bombing.
The pair will begin their Pole Of Positivity challenge in early January, hopefully creating a World and Guinness record for sit-skiing to the South Pole in the process. More than that, however, the mission is intended to highlight that through the toughest challenges life can throw at someone, surprising things become possible.
Antarctica is the final element of Ms Darke’s personal Quest 79 – a target she set to cover seven continents in nine rides, raising £79,000 for spinal injury charities. The number 79 is also the atomic number for gold, a throwback to her geology career, and symbolic of achievement.
‘Best for last’
THE theme has expanded among her followers – there is now a global community working its way through personal challenges hooked around the number 79. Ms Darke, meanwhile, has kept the best for last in her Quest 79 challenge. “Antarctica is the ultimate challenge,” she said. “It is a place that people in wheelchairs don’t go to.”
There are particular difficulties for a wheelchair user – body temperature control, skincare, and using the toilet are just a few. But its remoteness is also part of the attraction.
“For most people our biggest disability is our mind and the limitations we put on our bodies. Disability is a state of mind, not a state of body,” she says.
“I’ll be going to an environment where you get the biggest, most amazing connection to nature, where there’s no manmade world at all.
“That wilderness really appeals to me, and I want to spread the message about the power of the wilderness and nature.”
The Fort William Mountain Festival 2022 runs from February 16 to 20. For details to go mountainfestival.co.uk