Before her last deployment in Afghanistan, Kirstie Ennis served as a helicopter door gunner and air frames mechanic with the United States Marine Corps.
The Sikorsky CH-53D helicopter wherein she flew had crashed in June 2012, in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, while executing a combat resupply to Forward Operating Base (FOB) Now Zad, and following this event, the ex marine’s life took a whole new turn.
The crash left her with severe traumas to her face, brain, spine, shoulders, and left leg, forcing her to be medically retired from the U.S Marine Corps as a sergeant. Her face was reconstructed and other affected parts treated after dozens of surgeries. However, her left knee was completely gone, the best doctors could do was provide a prosthetic.
Years of psychological trauma followed. Depression weighed her down, and for a long time, she wondered what else she could do, apart from being a fighter.
She had to go back for another surgery on her knee following an infection and her entire knee had to be amputated. And it got harder, but according to her, even though she had lost a limb it didn’t matter more than what she had ‘behind her ribcage’ and ‘between the ears’, her heart and her mind.
Snowboarding was first to occur to her as a group from Disabled Sports USA called her interest to the sport. According to her, the birth of her mental freedom came from her first time flashing down the mountains on her snowboard. She realized she was a fighter, still was and could still remain a fighter, a fighter for a cause.
She joined a group of former vets on a thousand mile walk called Walking With the Wounded, across Scotland, Wales and England in honor of comrades who weren’t as lucky as she was. She had about 25 dog tags with names of deceased marines along with their ranks and would drop each of the dog tags after every 40 miles.
They were to walk for a total of seventy two days, covering around 15 miles each day.
She didn’t let her condition stop her from snowboarding, nothing was going to stop that. She competed for three years in snowboarding and earned a national title from the USA Snowboard and Freeski Association. As her zeal to explore all her abilities kept towering, she took to mountaineering.
In 2016, she reached the top of Indonesia’s Carstensz Pyramid, and in 2017, she was at the top of Africa’s highest peak, Mount Kilimanjaro, becoming the first female, above the knee amputee, to summit these two mountains. On Kilimanjaro, she left a dog tag she made of Lance Cpl. Matthew Rodriguez, who died in 2013 while serving in Afghanistan.
Alaska’s Mount Denali was the next peak she tried to summit. She was on this expedition throughout the month of June 2018 but had to abort after reaching 18,200 feet on the ‘beast of the mountain’ due to circumstances with the weather.
Currently, she has taken the mountain climbing to new heights by going on the Seven Summits Project. Each climb, according to her, is a moment for a new lesson, for a new broken boundary, a new record, and a fundraiser for a different non profit organization.
Wounded Warrior Regiment CC BY-NC 2.0
The Seven Summits Project will see her in Russia in September 2018 climbing Mount Elbrus, the highest peak in Europe. In December 2018 and early January 2019, she will make for Mount Vinson. She wishes to snowboard down this Antarctic mountain, and be the first amputee to do so.
January 11th, she will begin another expedition in Argentina by climbing Aconcagua, North America’s highest mountain. Then she will stretch it to Australia in February to summit Mount Kosciusko. In April, she’ll be in Tibet scaling the heights of Mount Everest, the highest in the world. She aims to snowboard down Everest and be the first amputee to do so.
A summit in the North Pole has yet to be decided. The last on her list is the mountain she considers the scariest, Mount Denali, which she attempted to climb in June 2018. She will be up against the mountain for another round in June 2020.
According to her, at the time of her accident and subsequent amputation, she didn’t have anybody to look up to. So she takes on these expeditions not only to raise funds for nonprofits, but also to inspire other injured female veterans and female amputees to embrace their inner strength, and their ability to push beyond their limitations.
Furthermore, she produces her own prosthetic leg and has gifted a climbing foot to ex Army Staff Sergeant Earl Granville who became famous for going through the 2012 Boston Marathon carrying his guide and a U.S flag across the finish line.
She also wants to begin a mass production of prosthetic legs which would be gifted to amputee kids.