Pull: A Paraplegic’s Attempt At Half Dome

Photographer Justin Bastien documents Sean O’Neill, a t-12 paraplegic, as he attempts to climb Yosemite's Half Dome.

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to climb Yosemite’s Half Dome, a rock formation that was once called “perfectly inaccessible”? Now imagine ascending its two mile granite face as a paraplegic. That’s exactly what Sean O’Neill, a t-12 paraplegic, recently attempted to do. Photographer Justin Bastien was with him the entire way, documenting his journey.

Just reaching the rock was a challenge in itself. Sean rode a mule the 8.2 mile trail to the notch on Half Dome. From there, the group took turns carrying him on their backs to the base camp.”He weighs 120 pounds,” Justin says, “and the terrain is pretty challenging with lose rocks, slippery areas of dirt and sand and some areas where a fall would be fatal. Timmy carried him most of the way, which was unbelievable considering how exhausting it was.” Upon reaching the Dome, Sean began his ascent using a unique climbing system Timmy developed. Sean has used this system, which involves a small pull bar attached to an ascender, on his past climbs, including on El Capitan. He then basically pulled himself up the sheer face of the rock, dragging his legs behind him. Of the climb, photographer Justin Bastien says,

Sean was getting worked on the wall and still wanted to keep going. He encountered challenging overhanging ledges that he had to literally haul his legs over. There were pendulums where he had to swing across the low angle wall. Eventually, all of this provided to be too much to handle with such little time to climb 1,700 feet to the first place of rest and shelter. Luckily, Timmy made the right call and they decided to descend. When they got to the bottom, they realized Sean’s shoes had worn through and if they’d kept going in the dark, Sean would have surely injured his feet.

Justin is extremely proud to have been a part of Sean’s adventure saying, “I learned so many great lessons from this project on a professional and more importantly, on a personal level. None of us give up easily, especially Sean, and we just kept moving forward with each challenge along the way. Seeing Sean out there with the biggest smile on his face you could ever imagine in the middle of all of that suffering and hard work made the whole experience worthwhile. Next year, we will be back to climb the route and put Sean on the summit of Half Dome.”

Read more at: http://blog.wonderfulmachine.com/2012/10/pull-a-paraplegics-attempt-at-half-dome/