This month, the star of the end of our September month is Wendy Ong, a Spinal Cord Injury survivor who has defeated the odds and continued to pursue her passions of climbing and skiing some of the most difficult passes.
“Certain that Bob had me, I unclipped from the anchors, leaned back – and then free-fell nearly 200 feet to the ground.” I kept telling myself, “Don’t close your eyes Wendy, don’t close your eyes.”
Wendy Ong is the only person to have fallen nearly 200 feet (70m), survive, go on to rock climb, ice-climb, and ski at high levels with a T-10 Spinal Cord Injury; survive sepsis and climb her hardest trad route as a paraplegic (5.12- Cloud Tower, Red Rocks, Nevada) a few months later; ski her way across North America; and be the only para to ski, ice-climb, and rock climb in the space of less than ten days.
Alex Honnold, arguably the world’s greatest free climber and center of a climbing controversy, has been featured in a series of television specials profiling his epic achievements. In the February issue of Rock and Ice magazine, he’s featured in an interview spread covering his feelings about death, which seems to have become the hanging topic over Honnold’s head – “Does he know he will most likely die doing what he’s doing?”
