TAGGED UNDER: Adventure & Sports

Karen Darke: How? Now. Wow!

Raleigh Addington
Raleigh Addington
editor at Chartwell Speakers

A week or so ago, Chartwell met up with Karen Darke, one of Britain’s top athletes and a medal contender in the London 2012 Paralympics.

A climbing and all-round outdoor obsessive, Karen was paralysed from the chest down when she fell 10 metres off a rockface. She was just 21. Since then she has overcome innumerable physical and mental barriers to complete truly mind-blowing achievements. These have included handcycling across the Tian Shen and Karakoram mountains in Central Asia, handcycling across Japan, kayaking 1200 miles along the Canada-Alaska coast, and climbing El Capitan (which involved over 4000 pull-ups).

Karen’s next challenge is competing in the 2012 Paralympics in the GB handcycling team.

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