I haven’t had a lot of tragedy in my life. Tragedy is a very powerful word. Growing up in Nigeria, a country where people experience real hardship and poverty, where corruption is rampant and life is often cheap, I got to see what tragedy could look like. Despite these abject hardships, people were happy. They found joy in the simplest of pleasures and accepted that life can be hard at times, but they pushed forward. I think that gave me some real perspective.

Aside from losing some family members and suffering through an emotionally challenging divorce, my most recent difficulty happened last summer. I was attempting a big mountaineering traverse in Rogers Pass, BC with two friends, Nick Elson and Dakota Jones when I suffered a bad fall while climbing unroped up a peak. A big rock I was pulling on to climb up, came out on me, sending me tumbling backwards over 200-feet down a series of rocky cliffs.

When I first felt the rock pull out and sensed myself falling backwards, I had a strange sense of calm come over me and I had almost instant acceptance that I was going to die. With hindsight, I now get chills thinking about the incident and I have clear flashbacks to seeing the peaks on the horizon flipped upside down and thinking about how strange that sight was as I tumbled down the mountain.

When I finally came to rest in a field of scree at the base of the peak, surrounded by a pool of blood, I knew that I had hurt myself very badly, but I was alive.

Nick and Dakota were able to climb down to me very quickly. They were able to call for help and they sat beside me helping me to stay calm. I was airlifted out of the area and was in surgery by that night. When I came to after my surgery I learned that I had broken my back, the iliac crest in my hip, had severe lacerations - down to the bone around my hip - I had scars across my body, and I had broken my ankle. The doctors assured me that I would make a full recovery, but they couldn’t answer what that actually meant. I didn’t know if I could ever run, ski, or climb again, or even if I would want to.

Race Smarter, Not Harder

Self Talk

Photos by Matt Clark