Conquering Fear, Disability, and a Terrifying Mountain

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We've written about Major Phil Packer previously. He's the British soldier who lost the use of his legs while on duty in Iraq. Since that time, he has dedicated himself to raising money for disabled veterans. And he does this by raising awareness, through a series of extreme physical challenges. He's rowed the English Channel, he's run a London Marathon (two miles a day for two weeks).




And yesterday, he completed an ascent of El Capitan, the famed granite monolith in Yosemite. Major Packer has no use of his legs, and so, over four days, he pulled himself up in a special sling chair, one pull-up at a time. El Capitan is one of the most famous rock-climbing challenges in the world. (About half way through the second video, there's a moment where the camera looks down the face of the rock. Just seeing the video makes me want to barf.)

Packer is, apparently, terrified of heights. But that didn't stop him. He ascended the mountain, and has at this point, raised over one million pounds for Help for Heroes.

Here's another video, that I can't seem to embed in this blog post.

Comments

Baqash said…
Conquering the mental road block is huge.

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