SOUTH JORDAN — This past April, during an extended spring break, Renee DeHaan — Ms. DeHaan to the students at Wasatch Middle School, where she is the vice principal — trekked into Everest Base Camp, the fabled high-altitude outpost that is the launching point for pushes to the summit of Mount Everest, the world’s tallest mountain.
An admitted Everest-phile — “I’ve read all the books, seen all the movies” — Ms. DeHaan knew she was walking where Hillary, Tenzing, Mallory, Messner, Apa Sherpa and all the Everest legends had once set foot prior to pushing on to make their marks and set their records.
But none of them had done what she just did: hike to base camp on a prosthetic leg and a surgically altered club foot.
Fifty-four years ago, Renee was born with a right foot that wasn’t there and a distorted left foot pointed in the wrong direction (as well as with hands that had just two digits each). Scores of surgeries on the left foot and an artificial right leg with a molded Symes foot made it so she could walk.
Despite these abnormalities, she didn’t dwell on them. This was because her parents, Steve and Linda Stirling, didn’t dwell on them, either. They focused on what she could do, not what she couldn’t.
The family motto was comprised of three words: Figure It Out (her grandpa engineered her first artificial leg).
At the University of Utah, Renee majored in special education so she could be an advocate for kids needing someone to look out for them, inspire them and show them the way.
Which brings us back to hiking to Everest Base Camp.
It wasn’t Renee’s idea. At the first of March, she was getting maintenance on her artificial leg at the Hanger Clinic, a local prostheses-making company, when her friend and longtime prostheticist, Quincey Brabant, asked her if she’d like to go with her on a trek to Everest Base Camp.
Without hesitation, Renee said, “Sure.”
The fact that A) the trek was less than a month away and B) no one was sure if a person with Renee’s type of prosthetic leg had ever so much as attempted such a thing did not come up for discussion.
Instead, Quincey, who is 30, and Renee got to work customizing her leg to better handle the strain, while also assembling the tools they’d need for prosthetic maintenance along the way. (Hanger Clinic agreed to partially sponsor Renee’s trip.)
The women knew the route they’d be taking: 40 miles of uneven, irregular terrain with sections of breathtaking exposure, terrific views, often freezing temperatures, constantly thinning air and 22,000 feet of elevation gain (counting all the ups and downs).
After landing at Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, they’d fly into the Tenzing Hillary Airport, reputed to have the second most dangerous landing strip on Earth, and begin their trek in the Nepalese village of Lukla, at 9,383 feet. Nine days later, if all went well, they’d arrive acclimatized in Everest Base Camp, at 17,598 feet.
What the women didn’t know was how many obstacles would crop up along the way.
First problem: Renee’s luggage got lost. When she landed in Kathmandu, all her gear and the tools for her leg were somewhere in India. Next problem: Two hours into the trek, she walked too close to the edge, her leg didn’t bend and she almost fell off a cliff.
“Luckily, a guy was there and caught me and literally threw me back onto the trail,” says Renee. “Everyone has their moment where you have to make a decision if you’re going up or down the mountain. That was my moment. I remember landing on that trail and the reality sunk in: This is hard. If you’re going up, you better be prepared.”
Says Quincey: “For Renee to hike through Nepal, it takes an enormous amount of energy, a lot more than for an able-bodied person. Her energy expenditure is so much higher because of her level of limb loss. But her mindset was always, I’m gonna get there.”
By the time her luggage did arrive, Renee and Quincey had discovered that duct tape worked miracles in keeping her leg and feet protected and in place, and that hiking in her Crocs was easier on her feet than the fancy hiking boots she’d purchased.
Every day, she kept Figuring It Out.
“My parents taught me the language of grit, the quiet type, not the roar of the crowd, but the inner voice that says try again,” says Renee.
Toward the end, when she got so exhausted she could barely walk, she rode a horse for a day (“this wasn’t an ego trip, I didn’t say I had to walk every step”).
Until, finally, she looked up and there it was: Everest Base Camp.
“It looked exactly like I was hoping, like I imagined,” says Renee. “I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.”
Before starting back down the trail the next morning, Renee and Quincey stopped at the famous rock at the entrance to base camp, the one all the greats have touched through the years. Posing for a photo, Renee took off her right leg and held it high in the air. It wasn’t Hillary and Tenzing making the first summit in 1953. But in its own way, it was equally historic.
Read the full report at Deseret News.
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