Sam Tait completes first non-mechanical ascent of Kosciuszko by paraplegic

The sun had long since begun its descent off the mountain's glowing western edge. Tait's left forearm had lost all grip strength but after almost eight hours of climbing, the summit was almost in his grasp.

It was freezing, and getting cooler with every breath. His energy levels were depleted, and his mental strength was beginning to fray.

Anchoring ropes were the only way to progress. The cross-country sit ski was still underneath him, but the upper ramparts of Kosciuszko were far too steep for it to contribute at this point.

Tait's arms burned. But with one final effort he hauled himself onto Australia's roof, and the country opened up before him.

An orange sun continued to lower itself into the western sky. Tait averted his eyes and looked wistfully northeast, briefly reflecting on the moment when everything changed.

27 April, 2013

Tait had been riding with friends on his motorbike all morning.

They'd gone down the coast via Kangaroo Valley, ridden through Berry and up into Wollongong. He crossed a bridge and then everything went blank. For the next 72 hours all he recalls is just a hazy patchwork of momentary snippets.

There was the Sydney Harbour Bridge beneath him. Then a wave of unbearable agony as he underwent a body scan. A nervous laugh with his surgeon.

Three days later he was surrounded by family and wide awake in hospital, no longer clinging so desperately to his morphine button.

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"I kind of subconsciously knew what had happened but I was 22 years [old] at the time," Tait recalls.

"I've got my family around me saying you've severed your spinal cord, you're never going to walk again. Basically you're life's going to be so much different. And I thought 'Nope, you guys don't know what you're talking about, I'm going to be back at work in a week'.

"The first five years, I wouldn't say was easy, but I think I was just keeping really busy and didn't really have time to think about what had actually happened. Two years ago was probably the hardest year for me. I wouldn't say I was sad, but things became a little bit more realistic, stuff that I couldn't do or wanted to experience."

Tait had broken the T11 vertebrae in his spine after a motorcycle accident, and been airlifted to Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney. Rendered a paraplegic, three months of intensive rehabilitation followed, and a career in sit skiing was soon born.

He was told initially that the 2018 Winter Paralympics would likely come too soon, but Tait defied expectations and competed in five events at the Pyeongchang Games. Beijing 2022 has long been circled in his calendar, as has Italy four years further down the track.

But another challenge had been preying on Tait's mind for the past 12 months - a non-motorised ascent of Australia's highest mountain, Kosciuszko.

Tait was towed to the top in 2019, but a seed began to germinate. Could he scale the mountain without mechanical assistance?

11 October, 2020

Tait and his team began at Charlotte Pass. He rode his handcycle to Seaman's Hut about 6km away but a snow bank temporarily halted the advance before his companions began shoveling a path to grant him further progress. The mountain steepened and the only way forward was to trawl through on his hands, while his legs were held like a wheelbarrow. "I couldn't get my hand cycle through it, and the cross country ski only works well on flat, level ground so that was not an option," Tait said.

"In my head I was like, if someone just holds my legs I can just walk on my hands and wheelbarrow myself up this snow bank. We went 10 metres and I was like 'Oh, this is a bad idea'.

"We didn't really know what it was like past Seaman's because no one had been out there for a while so we kind of just had to adapt whatever we came across. They were just workhorses, shoveling, lugging stuff uphill. It was pretty incredible to get mates wanting to get you to the top and doing whatever they could."

Tait and his team descended in darkness. He took the chance to ski back down underneath a brilliantly bright Milky Way, supported as always by a resilience even larger than Kosciuszko.

"It [the accident] is still probably the best thing that's ever happened to me - I get to travel the world and ski and live in Perisher for the winters...I wouldn't change it that's for sure."