Inspirational athlete and adventurer Karen Darke MBE has won a top mountaineering award.
Organisers of the Fort William Mountain Festival have announce that one of the UK’s most inspirational athletes and ambitious adventurers, Karen Darke, whose life journey has called for total commitment, determination and resilience, is the 15th recipient of the Scottish Award for Excellence in Mountain Culture, sponsored by JAHAMA Highland Estates.
Inverness-based Karen, is an author, global speaker, transformational coach, adventure mindset coach, athlete and adventuring soul. As a gold and silver medal winning British Paralympic hand cyclist (Rio 2016, London 2012), a European Paratriathlon Champion (2014), and international adventurer with a huge fighting spirit, she lives life as a modern-day ‘alchemist’, passionate about turning challenge into opportunity and transforming the difficult stuff into ‘gold’.
Karen said: ‘Receiving the Scottish Award for Excellence in Mountain Culture took me by surprise but is a real honour. Thank you. My soul is rarely peaceful without a mountain in its presence. On becoming paralysed almost thirty years ago it seemed at first that mountains were a thing of the past.
‘Thanks to the interesting technology of bikes and skis, and to great friends who have been up for some adventures, mountain landscapes have worked their way even deeper into the fabric of my being. The adventure mindset that mountains have taught me is the inspiration for my next book, which I’m hoping will connect others more deeply to the power in the wild landscapes around us.’
Karen with her Paralympic gold medal from Rio
Nominated by the public and her peers as a mountain hero who celebrates achievement, accomplishment and the spirit of adventure, Karen joins previous esteemed winners including Dave Morris, Andy Nisbet, Jimmy Marshall, Myrtle Simpson, Ian Sykes, and Dr Hamish MacInnes in the Excellence in Mountain Culture Hall of Fame.
Tom Uppington, managing director, ALVANCE British Aluminium, said: ‘Karen is the worthiest winner we can imagine of this award and an outstanding addition to the list of previous recipients. Karen’s resourcefulness, strength of character and mountain expertise are extraordinary and show qualities we can all aspire to in our daily lives.
‘ALVANCE Aluminium and JAHAMA Highland Estates are proud to play a role in the Fort William community and its place at the centre of British mountain culture. We look forward to further strengthening that association in coming years as we continue to invest in the town’s aluminium operations and surrounding estates.’
Karen Darke will be speaking at the Fort William Mountain Festival as part of the Biking Night at The Highland Cinema, Fort William, on Saturday, February 19.
Karen started her working life as a geologist in the Bolivian Andes, researching gold. However, at just 21, a life-changing accident whilst sea cliff climbing left her paralysed from the chest down. She moved away from being a ‘rock-doctor’ to exploring both outside and within, finding ways to align mind, body and spirit to do extraordinary things.
Karen has always been a keen athlete and early sporting achievements included climbing Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn in 1991 before winning the Swiss KIMM Mountain Marathon in 1992.
At 21 Karen awoke from a coma to be told she would never walk, cycle or climb again. With unbroken spirit, will and confidence, the first thing she bought after six months of recovery in a hospital bed was a race chair. A year later she completed the Great North Run followed by the London Marathon.
Karen Darke competes on roads and in the snow
In 1996 she hand-biked across the Himalaya from Kazakhstan and across to Pakistan, whilst still adapting to being paralysed; through the Indian Himalaya in 2005 and 2018, and across the Tibetan Plateau in 2014. In 2002 she was part of a team that sea kayaked through the Inside Passage from Canada to Alaska (Vancouver to Juneau) in 10 weeks.
In 2006, she took part in an expedition that crossed Greenland’s ice sheet whilst sitting on skis using her arms and poles to cover the 372-mile crossing. Sixteen years after her accident ended her climbing ambitions, Karen climbed the infamous El Capitan in California’s Yosemite National Park, a four-day climb that required 4000 pull-ups. More recently Karen has been cycling the seven continents following rivers and coastlines and exploring Inner Gold as a concept behind a book she is working on.
Currently, Karen is training for the ninth and final leg of her Quest 79 project, to create the Pole of Possibility, sit-skiing with a team-mate, Iona Somerville, graduate of Scottish charity The Polar Academy who work with teenagers often low in belief and aspiration. The pair will begin their exploration at 79 degrees latitude and create a World and Guinness Record for sit-skiing to the South Pole. Their mission is to explore and share the advantages of adversity.
Karen and Iona’s personal stories illustrate that through the toughest events of life surprising things become possible. Pertinent to current interest in emotional health and mental wellbeing, they will explore how adversity, nature and adventure help us heal from difficult life events and that to enable our individual and collective ability to do more than we might believe possible.
Find out more about Fort William Mountain Festival HERE.
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