A throng of reporters with cameras, microphones and notebooks surrounded Kyle Maynard on a warm October morning at Stone Mountain. They were there to watch the 25-year-old athlete, who was born without full-length arms and legs, train for his next challenge: climbing to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro in January.
The Buford resident was sitting on a blanket in the parking lot of Confederate Hall, unpeeling rolls of Gorilla Tape, a slightly stronger, more durable version of duct tape. The tape secured bits of canvas, thick chunks of foam padding, and pieces of mountain bike tires to the ends of his limbs.
He told the reporters these make-shift, low-tech materials are all he needs to make it up the 19,341-foot Uhuru Peak. When he gets there, he will be the first quadruple amputee to touch “the roof of Africa,” as Kilimanjaro is known, and the first person with such a disability to top any one of the Seven Summits, the highest mountains of each continent.
The fact that he doesn’t need any fancy gear is part of Maynard’s practically patented “no-excuses” philosophy about life.
The 16-day climb will serve as a fundraiser for the Mwereni Integrated School for the Blind in Tanzania, as well as an awareness campaign to motivate people living with disabilities all over the world. Kristen Sandquist and Kevin Cherilla of K2 Adventures Foundation will lead the expedition, which will include nearly a dozen friends and veterans inspired by Kyle’s message to flip perceived weaknesses on their heads, and use them as their own unique means to achieve personal goals.
To get that message out, publicity is a necessity, which isn’t a problem. Maynard’s been at home in the spotlight for the past several years.
In 2006, he published his memoir “No Excuses: The True Story of a Congenital Amputee Who Became a Champion in Wrestling and in Life” (Regnery Publishing). Two years later, he opened No Excuses CrossFit gym in Suwanee. In 2009, he became the first person with a disability to compete in an official Mixed Martial Arts match. Because the Georgia Athletic Commission would not grant him permission to fight in an MMA cage match in his home state, Maynard had to compete in Alabama.
During his quest to fight that match, Maynard’s friends turned their video cameras on him, creating a documentary that aired on ESPN and opened his life to a bigger audience, including Dan Adams, who asked Kyle to join him on a climb up Kilimanjaro as a way to empower injured and disabled veterans. Now that the MMA quest is behind him, Kilimanjaro has become Maynard’s next white whale.
Adams and Maynard went to Colorado in July to attend a conference sponsored by No Barriers, a nonprofit that seeks adaptive solutions for disabled climbers. There they met Erik Weihenmayer, a blind athlete who summited Mt. Everest in 2001. Weihenmayer invited them to come along on a hike up North Twin Cone, a 12,000-foot peak in Winter Park, Colo.
Adams pushed Maynard up some of the trail in a wheelchair, then decided to ditch the chair and wrap Maynard’s limbs in hotel towels and duct tape. It was on this hike, Adams said, that they knew Maynard would be able to make it up Kilimanjaro.
"For the last two hours of the hike, Kyle crabbed along through mud, over rocks and across snowfields until we reached 12,000 feet,” Weihenmayer said. “We were quite the team – the gimp leading the blind while all the able-bodies struggled to keep up.”
The additional 7,000 feet of altitude on the Kilimanjaro climb will require a bit more than a positive outlook, but not by much.
“There are certain obstacles on summit day that are the biggest challenges,” said Todd Zeigler, director of orthopedic trauma at Gwinnett Medical Center and a climber who’s completed the Machame Route that Maynard and his team will follow.
“On the last day, you have to get up early, maybe midnight or 1 a.m., and you have to march up difficult terrain and move quickly because once you get to the top, you need to get yourself back down pretty fast. You don’t want to stay at those altitudes in the afternoon because that’s when bad weather can come.
“It’s a substantial undertaking, and lots of people have tried and failed. But with all the planning and prep, and obviously with Kyle’s drive, I think he’ll be successful,” said Zeigler.
Maynard also is confident of his success.
“I think Kilimanjaro will be the toughest test I’ve ever faced,” said Maynard. “I want to send the message to people to just get up and do something. We can whine and complain about all the bad things that can go wrong. But there’s life to live, and I want to show people that you can just get up and go live it.”
At a Glance
For information on Mission Kilimanjaro, go to www.missionkilimanjaro.com
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