Wellington man Andrew Leslie has climbed the height of Mount Everest in a year by walking up Mount Kaukau 35 times, six years after a mountain bike crash left him with a spinal cord injury that turned him tetraplegic.
Leslie injured his spine on a trail he used to ride for fun. He spent five months in Burwood Hospital in Christchurch, where he had to learn to live with the consequences of his injury and work out how much movement he could rebuild. He walked out of the spinal unit on his own feet, but that did not mean the recovery was over.
He told RNZ that the word tetraplegic still makes most people picture a wheelchair, and he was in one for a while, but every spinal injury is different and every outcome is different. Movement does not come automatically to him anymore. He has to think about each step before his body will produce it, and walking, which most New Zealanders never have to think about, is a sequence of decisions and corrections he runs through his brain dozens of times a minute.
To keep that work going, he sets himself a single big goal each year. In the first year after the crash he walked back to the spot where it happened. The year after that he ran five kilometres around Karori Park. One year he completed a five day Outward Bound course. Another year he walked the Abel Tasman Coast Track over five days with his friend George Thompson, who is also tetraplegic. The pair covered 60 kilometres with a support crew and careful planning, and Leslie said getting to the finish line was incredibly emotional.
This year he wanted something closer to home, on a track he used to trail run before his accident. Mount Kaukau sits behind Khandallah and rises to 445 metres, with a steep grunt up through bush and grass to the transmitter at the summit. To match the 8,849 metres of Mount Everest he needed to make the climb at least 20 times. He kept going, and over 12 months he topped out 35 times.
The track is not a gentle one. Leslie said the things that trip him up are not the things able-bodied trampers notice. Stairs that have eroded at the base create one tall first step, small rocks that poke up out of the track can catch a foot that does not lift cleanly, and switchbacks that are easy for someone with full control of their legs become a calculation for someone who has to instruct each muscle. He has been working with Wellington City Council and an accessibility stakeholder group on the Southern Walkway on Matairangi to look at ongoing improvements.
The council told RNZ that Mount Kaukau is particularly steep and a challenge for some users, that the track itself is difficult to maintain, and that when budget allows it tries to improve it to make it more sustainable and reduce long term costs. It confirmed it was aware of the accessibility issues and was working with Leslie and others on changes.
Leslie has been careful not to argue that every track in the country should be turned into a smooth concrete path. He said accessibility means different things to different people, and the conversation has too often defaulted to a single standard built around wheelchair users. There are quieter ways to open the bush up to more people, he said, without going for full bells and whistles. A handrail in the right spot, a step rebuilt to an even height, a bit of metal in a boggy section. None of it is glamorous, and most able-bodied users would walk past without noticing, but for someone who has to think their way up a hill it can be the difference between a track they can use and one they cannot.
Raising awareness of that is one of the reasons he keeps telling his story. He heads Nuku Ora, a Wellington-based regional sports trust whose kaupapa is helping people of all abilities move, and he has been pushing guidance for councils and the Department of Conservation on what low-cost accessibility measures look like in practice. Great Walks bookings have just opened for the coming season, and DOC has said it expects strong demand. For Leslie that is exactly the audience worth talking to, because most of the people booking will never know what a Great Walk feels like to a tramper who has to plan every footfall.
His rehabilitation is supported by ACC. Head of client recovery Matthew Goodger said the corporation was proud to see Leslie continue to set and achieve his goals and pleased to have supported him in his recovery, and that his story was a strong example of the difference sport and recreation can make after a life-changing accident.
For next year Leslie has already chosen his goal. He wants to walk Lake Waikaremoana, the Great Walk that loops around the bush-fringed lake in Te Urewera, and he is hoping Thompson will join him again. After Mount Kaukau 35 times over, four days in the Urewera bush is the kind of target that sounds reasonable. It is also the kind that, six years ago in a hospital bed at Burwood, would have sounded impossible.
Leslie said his rehab is not about getting back to who he was before the crash. He will never recover from the injury in that sense. It is about optimising what he has got, and proving year after year that the ceiling is higher than it looks from underneath.
What do you think of Andrew Leslie’s approach to rehabilitation and accessibility in the outdoors? Have you walked a track that could be opened up to more people with a few small changes? Leave a comment below and let us know.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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