A wheelchair ride up Mount Kilimanjaro was an offer too good to refuse for a West Australian woman who had to overcome fear and anxiety to make it to the summit. Chris Kerr is now among a select group of wheelchair users to scale the highest peak in Africa, and she wants it to become something more people can aspire to.
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00:0019,000 feet above sea level, emotions run high as Chris Kerr and her team summit Mount
00:08Kilimanjaro.
00:09We made it to Gilman's Point, 5,685 metres.
00:14A five day trek above the clouds, without her usual wheelchair.
00:19We have two of those trekking chairs here in Geraldton and we'd just been trialling
00:24them in the Kalbarri Gorges and came back from that trial and got an email saying, do
00:29you want to do this crazy trip to climb Mount Kilimanjaro?
00:33We thought, why not?
00:34A daunting task for anyone, but that didn't stop Chris Kerr and her partner Zane.
00:39This is like a really classic example of a challenge that even we thought that is a big
00:48bite to take.
00:50The experience made possible by a willing team of guides and porters, Chris Kerr trusted
00:55them with her life.
00:57They were so invested in having success and having you have a really great experience
01:03and they were just amazing, I just fell in love with them, they were all fabulous.
01:08You know when we talk about disability access, we talk about a good attitude first and that
01:12was just the thing they had in spades.
01:15For Ms Kerr, the main question isn't why she climbed Kilimanjaro, but why not?
01:23The whole experience is about saying, you know people want to go mountain climbing,
01:27why shouldn't they go mountain climbing?
01:29And for people to be less surprised that people with disabilities want to be out and about
01:34doing things everyone else takes for granted.
01:37An achievement that has left this West Australian yearning for the next adventure.