One More Step: My Story of Living with Cerebral Palsy, Climbing Kilimanjaro, and Surviving the Hardest Race on Earth

by Bonner Paddock

  But now, the longer I continued, the less able I was to shut away the pain and stay positive. I was too tired. The altitude, the wind, the endless night—they had worn me down. The altitude and exhaustion mixed with my own self-doubt to create a bizarre cocktail of emotion. Those questions about why I was here and what was I trying to prove came flooding back, but I had few satisfying answers.

  In a haze of frustration, I started to think of everyone who had ever doubted me. Of every jeer and joke. Of every time I was picked last for a team in soccer or basketball. I thought of the unlucky fate that had brought CP to my door. The psychological pain drove me on. The anger drove me on. I pictured a furnace fueled by these feelings. Throw in some logs.

  I remembered playing kickball during elementary school. This equally supercompetitive kid and I were always battling each other. He thought he tagged me out with a throw, but then lost out on the call. A big shouting match ensued between us. In front of everybody on the playground, he dug into me about my funny walk: “Stomp, stomp, stomp!” My face reddened. I shouted back at him. Then—pow!—he punched me in the stomach, and I went down.

  I added it to the furnace.

  I remembered all those visits to all those doctors. Walk here, bend there, the stab of needles. I heard “Boner . . . Boner . . . ” and the cruel playground giggles that followed. I remembered all the lies I had told when someone asked me why I was walking differently, and all the girls who had probably never liked me because of my stork legs. I remembered those damn casts up to my hips and having to walk around like Frankenstein’s monster—and feeling like Frankenstein’s monster.

  The furnace started to roar.

  Each time I crossed a switchback and didn’t see any lights ahead, I was sure I was about to reach Stella Point. Then I would get to the turn, and there would be the headlamps again, up ahead, still bobbing up the mountain, still so far for me to go.

  With each step, I heaped another log into the flame: the scrapes, bruises, broken bones, clumsy falls—all of them. And I continued. The trail got even steeper. It was still dark, but I thought I saw a hint of blue on the horizon. Digging my poles in, I pushed myself up another step. Then another.

  We finally took another break. Unable to stand any longer, I sat on a boulder. I turned to where the sun was supposed to be rising, but any blue I had seen had been in my imagination. It was still pitch-dark.

  “This night is endless,” I said, marveling at the fact. “Where is the sun? Where is the light?”

  There was no answer. The darkness of the night was matched only by the bleakness of my memories.

  Then I was on my feet again, heading upward. Each step was slow and made with intent and great exertion. Too tired to lift my feet, I dragged the tip of my boot across the ground. I planted my left pole, then dragged my right foot a few inches forward. Then right pole, left foot, a few inches. They were baby steps, nothing more, and I knew I must have thousands more ahead of me before I reached the summit.

  I began to move and think in seconds, in individual moments. One second, I wanted to quit. The next, I urged myself to continue. Each was a battle. Each time I carried on was a victory, bloody and bruised though I was.

  At last I saw the horizon start to turn to a dark blue. Dawn was coming. I must be nearing Stella Point. The wind kept buffeting me. The cold bit deep, and the altitude drew away any strength I had left. But dawn was coming.

  When I saw the first sliver of sun, I almost wept with joy. But as night lifted, I saw the world as if lost in a fog. The lack of oxygen in my brain was messing with my eyes. Nothing was visibly distinct. Not the summit, not the trail ahead of me. Minja kept humming and trekking forward. I realized that Stella Point was still a long distance away. The realization came like a slow-motion punch to the jaw and knocked me off my feet. I staggered down onto a rock by the side of the path. My hands let go of my poles, and they dangled from my wrists by the straps. I sat, slouched forward, with my arms on my legs, my head hung down almost to my chest. The balls of my feet and my hip flexors stung with such intensity that I didn’t dare move. I sucked in a few deep lungfuls of air, but they had no effect.

  That whole night through I had told myself, Make it until the sun comes up, and you’ll be good. And now I had done exactly that, but there was still too far to go. Another hour—more—to Stella Point, then another hour after that to Uhuru Peak, the summit of Kilimanjaro. Too far. Too far. My eyes blurred, and the fog around me thickened. I heard voices, but the words meant nothing to me. Someone snapped fingers in my face, but I might have been a statue for all the response I gave.

  I pulled my balaclava down off my face and tried to revive myself with a few deep breaths. It worked before, I thought dimly. This time, however, I was completely and utterly exhausted. I tried a PowerBar, but it was still like trying to eat a stone. When I finally managed to chew off a bit, my throat was so dry from a lack of water that I could barely swallow. It was no use. I was done, kaput, down for the count. I stared at the holes worn in the knees of my pants, felt the cold seeping through them. My knees had been knocking so much with every step that they had worn through the fabric.

  I heard Swahili and turned my head to see Minja hovering over me. He reached under my arm and tried to lift me to my feet.

  “We go,” he said. “Let’s go. Time go. Weather come.”

  My legs were as limp as wet rags, and I fell back down onto the rock. Others tried as well, with the same result. It was no use. I lifted up my hand to signal them to leave me be. I felt the sun on my face, and the heat felt so good.

  “How are you doing?” Dilly asked. I recognized his voice, but I couldn’t answer. He put his hand on my knee. “Just breathe. Breathe.”

  “We’re close,” someone else said.

  I knew this was a lie, and my spirits sank even lower. Everything around me—the wind, the voices of encouragement, the cold, the tugs at my sleeve to help me up, the mountain, all of it—faded away. I could feel my eyes rolling back in my head and the world slipping away into deep warm blackness. For a second, I was lost to it. Give up. Stop. You don’t belong here. Let them carry you down the mountain on that metal stretcher. That would be easier than any more of this struggle. Then even those thoughts drifted away. I was nowhere, nobody, nothing.

  In the next second, I made a different choice. Wake up! You can’t stay on this rock. Get back on your feet. Who cares how much it hurts?! Fight through it. Never quit. That is who you are. That is who you need to be.

  The fog and the dizziness lifted away. The pain, thirst, cold, wind, and mountain all returned. I was still 1,000 feet, maybe more, from the summit, and there was no way I could stop, not now, not after all this struggle.

  I tried to get up, but my legs still did not have the strength. I raised my arm again, this time with my hand outstretched: Help me up. I need help.

  Minja pulled me up off the rock. I wavered on my legs, but then held steady, my poles supporting me. The others in my team must have gone on ahead again, as it seemed to be just Minja and I against Kilimanjaro once more. I staggered forward. One step followed the next.

  The trail zigzagged up a sharp slope of scree toward Stella Point. My boots slipped on the small rocks, doubling the effort required to cover the distance to the ridge. I started to feed the furnace inside me again, this time with more powerful stuff than playground taunts. Harnessing the anger, I confronted haunting memories of my family. Sitting on the couch, my parents telling me that Dad’s only moving out for a while, when in fact, he never returned. Having our neighbor’s father teach me to ride a bike, since my own wasn’t around. My brother Matt doing his own thing. Mike gone altogether, to college, abandoning us. Time and again, he would set a date to hang out, and then he would never show, never even show. There I would sit, stewing, not knowing why he had not come, blaming myself.

  And then there was my mom. For my entire childhood she ignored that something was wrong with me, dressing us up like the Partridge family every Sun
day for church, while I suffered through a childhood of bruises and broken bones. She never acknowledged what was so painfully obvious: that I was different. That I was not like everyone else. That I had cerebral palsy. The furnace roared again.

  Head down, one sluggish foot at a time, I advanced toward Stella Point. No matter how many steps I took, no matter how long I climbed, it felt as though I was getting no closer. The furnace weakened to a flicker, all those hurtful memories having exhausted themselves inside it. The cold and bruising agony in my body returned in force.

  Then I heard Minja again, chanting his Swahili prayer. Lulled into a trance, I trudged ahead.

  Other voices broke into my reverie, and at first I thought they were some weird trick of the altitude. Just another wicked joke from Kilimanjaro. Then they grew clearer. Some were yelps and cheers in Swahili, and others were calling my name.

  “Come on, Bonner! Come on! You got this, Bonner!”

  I looked up toward the ridge wall.

  Paul came down from the ridge to cheer me on. “You’re almost there.”

  Unable to raise my head, there was nothing I could do but nod and force my feet to take another step, then another, sliding back a few inches on the loose rock each time. It was probably best that I didn’t see Paul and the others in our team fight tears at the sight of me so exhausted, struggling so intensely, to make it over those last few feet to Stella Point.

  Finally, I crested the ridge. I had reached Stella Point: 18,850 feet above sea level. Tim was straight ahead of me. I stumbled into him, resting my head against his jacket. The others crowded around and patted me on the shoulder. Tim led me over to a boulder and helped me sit down behind it, out of the wind. My legs felt like limp noodles, and I heaved for breath. For several minutes, I remained bent over, spots before my eyes, trying to regain my hold on the world.

  Tim brought over a canister of some kind of lemon sugar water that tasted incredible. I had not had anything to drink for hours. At last, I recovered enough to ask Tim how much farther until the summit.

  “An hour, that’s it,” he said. “It’s really easy. You did the hard part.”

  For a long time, I leaned my head against the rock, eyes closed, not wanting to think about taking another step. My breathing eased somewhat, and my vision cleared.

  Paul came over and gave me a fist bump. “Love you, brother.”

  “Oh, man,” I said, feeling the first flush of relief that I had reached Stella Point.

  “Hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Paul admitted, sitting down beside me.

  “Hardest thing by far. You could add up the previous ten hardest things . . . not equal to this.” These were the most words I had strung together in hours.

  “Most miserable I’ve been.”

  “Let’s talk about the cold,” I said as I shook my head. “I couldn’t feel my hands or feet.”

  Dilly approached.

  “Where’s my boy?” I called. “Where’s Tex?”

  “You’re the man!” Dilly said, giving me a hug.

  The three of us rested against the boulder. I looked up at the peak. There was still a long way to go, but for the moment this felt like sweet relief.

  “We have to get moving before the weather changes,” Tim said and, as if on cue, the wind howled. “Ten minutes.”

  I nodded. “I’m here. I’m good now.”

  Paul leaned into me. “If you weren’t on this mountain, I’d have been done.”

  I welled up with feeling. Paul and Dilly were here for me; their friendship meant everything to me.

  Moody hovered over us and tapped his wraparound sunglasses. We were so high up that the sun’s rays were harmful to our eyes. We put on our sunglasses and rested for a few more minutes. The thought of getting to my feet, climbing higher still, scared me. I didn’t know where I would find the strength for the 700 feet to the summit. Every muscle and tendon, from my feet up to my hip flexors, was completely done. Any movement was torture.

  Then it was time to hit it. Paul grabbed my arm and lifted me to my feet. My head was swimming, and it felt as if my legs were going to crumple. I settled, and then, following Moody, I trudged back onto the trail.

  Any relief I had felt during our break evaporated twenty steps into the final climb. The altitude was wreaking havoc on me. I felt nauseous, spots dancing before my eyes, and unable to trust the ground beneath me. I had the strange sensation that my feet were sinking deeper and deeper into the scree. Soon I would not be able to lift them free.

  “Keep pressing on,” someone said.

  I couldn’t respond, couldn’t spare the breath or the concentration. Others passed me, but I didn’t care that I was falling behind again. The wind whipped around me, and the cold was sheer brutality. I staggered left and right, unable to hold to a straight line. Every few minutes, Minja tapped me on the left shoulder or the right, steering me back onto the path.

  One step. Another step. Another.

  My world reduced itself to Moody’s boots ahead of me and staying on my feet.

  It was supposed to be only an hour’s trek to Uhuru Peak, but time was now meaningless. My knees were knocking together constantly, rubbing the skin raw, and each step, I was sure, was going to be my last.

  I kept asking, “How much farther?” and “Are we close?” I could hear that my words were slurred.

  The only answer I got was, “Soon.”

  Unable to lift my head, I didn’t know what to believe.

  I tightened my hands on the poles etched with Jake’s initials and thought of him, feeding the furnace again. The cruelty of his death, the senselessness of it burned bright and hot. I thought of Steve and Alison Robert at Jake’s funeral, the incomparable tragedy of burying your own child.

  The trail became very rocky, and I staggered forward in a haze of exhaustion and limitless pain. When is this going to end? It has to be soon. Keep going. I heard voices, but the words were garbled. Just keep moving. Stay on your feet. Nothing else matters. Someone wrapped his arms around me. Why was he trying to stop me? I trudged ahead, staring down at the hard ground. Somebody else hugged me. The slope had not yet flattened. I wasn’t there yet; I couldn’t be.

  I lifted my head slightly. The team was gathered together ahead of me. I managed to make out the words, “Congratulations! You did it!”

  Paul and Dilly pointed to a sign, another 50 feet up on the slope: the mark of the highest point in Africa, Uhuru Peak.

  “It’s your moment,” one of them said.

  I finally realized what was going on. They were waiting for me. They wanted me to be the first to the top. I was almost there. This was happening. It was really happening.

  My poles bending under all my weight, I dragged myself up the slope. I felt as though I were sleepwalking: my legs stiff, arms out, the world nothing but shapes of gray. Then I was at the sign. I put my fists against it and tapped it a couple of times to make sure it was real. Then I leaned my head against the wood.

  I had made it. I had reached Uhuru Peak. I had summited Mt. Kilimanjaro. The fight was over. I had won. A wave of emotion overcame me, and I broke down in tears. I sat at the base of the sign, my hands flat against the rock, unable to stand any longer. For a second I was terrified at the thought of how I would get down off this mountain. I had nothing left. Nothing. Then I put that to one side, closed my eyes, and breathed as deeply as I could.

  I made it.

  Cheers rang out. Paul and Dilly joined me, and we cried together in joy, pride, relief, disbelief, pain, and happiness. With Paul holding me up, I tucked an Anaheim Ducks flag into the sign, and we took a couple of team photos.

  The views from up there were amazing: Mt. Meru in the distance, ringed by clouds, a long stretch of fortresslike glaciers, the giant volcano crater, and a clear vista for miles and miles of the flat lands surrounding Kilimanjaro. We were so high up that I could see the curvature of the earth.

  “We have to get down,” Moody said. The idea of climbing down from 19,340 feet shook
my nerves. I took one last look at the view from the summit, rattled by the strange thought that I had only just started something by climbing so high.

  8

  The Fun-House Mirror

  Minja called after me, but he would have had as much luck calling after a ball rolling down the mountain. Legs shot, unable to pick my way down the precipitous trail, I slid down the loose scree. Every 10 feet or so, I crashed onto my backside, but I didn’t care. It was the quickest—and probably the only—way I could descend Kili.

  On the way, I came upon Mitch, one of the documentary producers, who was sitting on a rock, looking drunk, a pile of bloody puke at his feet. His Tanzanian guide hovered at his shoulder. Altitude sickness had obviously forced Mitch to stop his own summit attempt.

  “Did you make it?” Mitch asked, dazed and confused.

  I assured him I had. We spoke for a few moments while Minja sharply urged Mitch’s guide to get him to a lower altitude. Mitch said he would be okay, and then I continued on my slip and slide down the scree; I needed off this mountain as well.

  Eventually, the trail leveled out, and Minja caught up with me long enough to give me a strange look that said, “What the hell were you thinking going down that way?” and I just smiled back. My pants were in shreds, but I had 2,000 fewer feet of Kilimanjaro to climb down.

  A few hours later, I reached base camp before many on my team, enjoyed the world’s best-tasting Coke, and collapsed in my tent. Every single part of my body hurt. Awakened shortly after by the others coming into the camp, I changed clothes and ate lunch, and then we all trekked farther down together. I managed the descent largely by swinging my hips from one side of the trail to the other, my legs following. It was excruciating, but I rarely took a break, wanting badly to get myself off the mountain.

  At 9,900 feet, we reached a permanent campsite, which had a small hut that sold beer and soda. We bought beers for everybody, including the guides and porters, and we finally celebrated. There were lots of high fives and toasts. We broke out into impromptu dances and songs that Dilly said resembled a “bad MC Hammer video.” We hoisted each other up on our shoulders and paraded around the campsite. Soaked in beer, breathing air rich in oxygen, and dizzy with the achievement, we were all pretty high, me included.