The tyres crunched and broke through a crust of salt, an unfamiliar experience after so many years riding over only tarmac and concrete. It was June 2022. It was the sound of liberation. It was the beginning of a new chapter in a story that had taken an unexpected turn three decades ago – a chapter I never thought I’d have the chance to write.
Across the encrusted salt of a Dead Sea beach, to the pebbles of a Loch Ness shore and the golden, wave-worn sands of the Scottish coast, the ICE handbike brought me freedom like I hadn’t known for thirty years of being paralysed. Each new terrain under my wheels was rewiring my mind, enabling me to reach places I naturally didn’t venture before. The reality had always been clear – if I diverted from a hard-packed trail or ribbon of tar, I would likely get stuck in my wheelchair or skinny-tyred handbike. But now, this machine was opening a whole new world.
I often found myself wondering: if I had known this freedom all along, I might never have funnelled my efforts for so many years into handbike racing around global circuits of tar. Perhaps those pristine racing circuits had been a compromise rather than a calling. Yet that racing history had built the strength and endurance for a challenge I never imagined possible.
When my friend Scott Wurtzbacher, founder of Inspire Campfire, invited me to join him and a group on a trek to Everest Basecamp, I marvelled at the word “YES!” as it left my mouth. I surprised even myself with the immediacy of my response. A previous version of me could never have agreed to ‘go trekking’: the Himalayas are not the first place that come to mind when thinking wheelchair-access, let alone the idea of scaling slopes to reach the most famed Base Camp in the world, below the most controversial peak on Earth.
Fast forward through a winter of anticipation, training, and preparation to March 22nd, 2025. The flight to Lukla promised to be the first hurdle: would my handbike’s super-size frame and ‘Al Mighty’ Schwalbe fat tyres possibly squeeze into the luggage compartment of the 18-seater twin-prop plane? “Yes, no problem” I was told months in advance during planning – but now, at the point of boarding the plane with only a tiny weather window to catch, it was a “Errrr, madam, we have big problem”.
The moment required rapid problem-solving, a skill that thirty years of paralysis has honed to perfection. With an allan key, some emergency dismantling, and a bunch of willing hands, we manipulated the ICE handtrike to fit into spaces it was never designed for. It wasn’t the last time on the journey that improvisation would save the day.
As our small aircraft climbed between towering peaks toward Lukla’s infamous mountain runway – allegedly the shortest, most dangerous runway in the world – I realized that this journey was already pushing me beyond boundaries I’d accepted for decades. I had never imagined, since becoming paralysed, that I would be trekking in the Himalayas, or witnessing first-hand the storied villages like Namche Bazaar that had existed only in adventure books and documentaries.
The ICE trike had experienced a warm-up in 2023, when its gnarly engineering with some help from African porters had taken me to the lofty heights of Kilimanjaro. But that was six days; this was a few weeks. That was a steady-inclined volcano; this was complex, twisted Himalayan morphology – a landscape that seemed to defy the very concept of wheeled movement.
As we flew in over the mountains, I felt their energy: waiting, indifferent to my paralysis, neither accommodating nor hostile – simply there, in all their magnificent challenge. I felt curious, but equipped not just with the right machine, but with the right mindset and some wonderful humans. It promised to be a journey beyond the assumed limitations of wheels, beyond boundaries that had defined my world since paralysis.
A piggyback from the plane and then over hundreds of steps landed me: along with our team, the porters who would support us, and my dishevelled, bubble-wrapped bike parts, on a concrete veranda. Whilst building the ICE trike, a tall rather Scottish-looking chap appeared at my side. “Karen Darke,” he muttered, “Only one person I know in a wheelchair mad enough to be here.” I looked up in disbelief. “Colin! What are you doing here?!”
Serendipity. Colin would become the knight, the saviour of my ability to pedal in the Himalayas, one of my heroes of the adventure ahead. The others that I would come to love and elevate to heroes were Durga, Kumar, Tez, Amar and Deepok, in fact all of their family, the ‘Basnets’, who would for the next few weeks be intensively involved in moving my wheelchair, my bike and me over super-tough terrain.
The body is so intricately interconnected that one torn muscle fibre can imbalance our whole system and prevent us from moving. My ICE trike is the same. A fine machine, meticulously engineered, meant that one missing front wheel skewer was effectively the end. Carefully wrapped in bubble wrap and tape to ensure it couldn’t come loose, it had disappeared – mysteriously vanished. A village-wide airport-scanning, bin-ravaging hunt began whilst I sat quietly, digging deep into my ability to reframe the situation. The prospect of being carried in a basket for two weeks did not feel an attractive alternative to riding. I am not at my best being a passenger.
Colin phoned his friend Sonam, a colleague instrumental in setting up the first fire and rescue service in the Khumbu region—home to the villages that line the path to Everest Base Camp. Sonam, a man with a small workshop and a reputation as “a magician with metal,” became our beacon of hope. While Colin tapped into his Himalayan network to locate a metal bar with the right diameter to serve as a makeshift axle, I braced myself for the only option available in the meantime: transport by basket.
And so, I found myself planted squarely in a wicker basket with a single strap fashioned from an old rice sack, designed to be carried across the forehead. The physical and mental resilience required to haul a human over steep, uneven Himalayan trails in such a manner defies comprehension. Yet I soon realised I was a featherweight compared to the commercial porters lurching past us with loads exceeding 100kg, balanced impossibly on their heads.
We had dithered long enough over what to do that, on route to our tea house for the night, we unexpectedly met Colin walking back toward Lukla – metal bar in hand. He had pushed ahead on the trail to retrieve the new axle and was now returning to join Sonam and begin the repairs.
To go into the intricacies of what unfolded in the following days would twist your mind and rattle your sense of what’s plausible. Let’s just say that the ICE trike – resilient and masterfully engineered – was pushed to its very limits, as were we. The improvised axle, made from metal that didn’t quite match the original grade, suffered under the strain: one catastrophic failure warped the brake disc beyond recognition, and others slowly bent out of shape as the terrain took its toll.
My nervous system was stretched taut, constantly anticipating the next point of failure. Yet every time it seemed we had reached the end of the road, another unlikely thread of magic unfurled: a spare brake disc discovered with Himalayan Single Track in Kathmandu; a sunrise motorbike dash to the airport; Chinese tourists arriving by helicopter for a champagne-and-croissant breakfast who just happened to have cargo space; and another metal rod, quickly reshaped into a handful of backup axles.
Colin and his deeply rooted Himalayan network pulled off quiet miracles in a land that gave nothing away easily—only challenge, grit, and a relentless sense of awe from the very first step. When the path became too much – its boulders, brutal gradients, and the sheer resistance it offered to a handbike – I accepted the basket with grace. It was, surprisingly, a welcome reprieve from the intense concentration required to navigate three wheels, all while a team of spirited porters pushed, pulled, and heaved me onward.
In those moments of surrender, I leant back and let go, held by capable hands that knew the terrain like an old friend. Freed from the urgency of movement, I could finally lift my gaze. Towering pinnacles loomed above – names I’d read in books came to life in dizzying dimensions: Ama Dablam, Lhotse, Nuptse, Lobuche… and countless other summits whose names I may never learn, but whose forms are etched into memory.
You needn’t have grown up on the flatlands, nor spent decades in a wheelchair, to be floored by the drama and scale of this living, breathing landscape. Its shapes aren’t static – they rise, fall, twist, and cut into the sky with a force that speaks to something ancient and untamed. The altitude starved my pedalling muscles and lungs, yet now and again I found the breath to gasp, simply: “Woah.”
Most of the time, though, my senses were too absorbed, fixated on the rhythm of the bike, or scanning the line of porters to anticipate the next lift or lurch. Moments to truly pause were rare. But when they came, they landed. Tears often streamed down my cheeks. I saw not just mountains, but the unshakable will of the people around me – their strength, their kindness, their quiet unquestioning certainty that we would reach Everest Base Camp. And in that, I saw a determination that, at times, out-scaled even my own.
Partway through the journey, Scott turned to me and asked how I was doing. I looked him straight in the eye and said, “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever done.” He later admitted that my words filled him with a quiet unease—if I saw it that way, what did that really mean?
I found myself unpacking that moment long after it passed, curious about my own choice of words. What made it feel so crazy? Was it the terrain – twisted, unforgiving, strewn with obstacles that turned every metre into a calculated risk, whether navigating by handbike or surrendering to the basket? Was it the relentless concentration required to manage each shift in gradient, to communicate with the small, committed team hauling me forward with trust and muscle? Perhaps it was the environmental intensity – the sudden swings in temperature, the effects of altitude, the constant need to protect a paralysed body from cold, pressure and injury.
There was also the emotional toll: my concern for the porters and the physical demands placed on them. The sheer scale of the challenge – aiming for Everest Base Camp at 5,364 metres. And an ever-present, quiet worry: that I might somehow be a burden on the others in our group, each of them navigating their own personal terrain – physical, emotional, or both.
Crazy? Perhaps. But what is “crazy” if not a reflection of our own perspective at a given point in time? What feels outrageous in one moment may feel inspired in the next. With the flick of a lens, I could have used a different word altogether: wondrous. Because it was. It was breathtaking, humbling, extraordinary – filled with moments that stirred awe and surprise.
And if anything was truly wondrous, it was the team that formed around me. The porters called me “Didi” – sister – and I called them my “Bais” – brothers. I felt it deeply: a bond built from respect, shared endeavour, and a kind of light-hearted strength that threaded itself through even the toughest moments. Their resilience and steady grace left me in awe. There was no trace of tension, no ego, no friction: only warmth, humour, kindness, and a respectful meeting with both the task and the land beneath our feet.
In a world so often defined by division and effort, it felt like a rare alchemy: the quiet miracle of people simply showing up for one another, moment by moment, step by breathless step.
Colin continued on with us. “I’ve never been to Everest Base Camp,” he admitted, despite spending much of the year living in the high-altitude village of Dingboche, just a few days’ walk away. “If ever there was a moment to go, this is it,” he said—and I deeply appreciated his companionship and selfless commitment to getting the ICE trike through, allowing me to experience as much independence and freedom in the mountains as possible.
He came equipped with tools, spare axles, and his ever-reliable problem-solving mind. With additional support from the most mechanically minded members of our team – Keith and Sam – it felt as though no axle failure, bent disc, or snapped cable could halt our uphill momentum.
Only on the final day to Base Camp did we decide the bike would need to be left behind and exchanged for the basket for the full day. The giant boulders and tangled path through the moraine of the Khumbu Glacier were simply not ‘trikeable’. I was in awe that we had made it so far—and felt a deep peace in surrendering to that final basket-haul up to Everest Base Camp.
Arriving at Everest Base Camp was a moment imprinted to memory. As the prayer flags fluttered in the thin, chilly wind and the giant icy peaks stood sentinel around us, we gathered at the iconic boulder that marks the end of the trail. Laughter, tears, and cheers mingled as we embraced each other, posed for endless photos, and soaked in the magnitude of what we had achieved together, an acknowledgement of perseverance, unity, and the quiet power of teamwork and human spirit meeting the vastness of the Himalayas.
Of course, descending had its own challenges and long days, but we all made it intact and safe, and I feel grateful for that.
In the end, what I carried away from our Himalayan journey was not just the memory of broken axles and improbable repairs, but a deeper encounter with surrender and trust. I had to let go completely, possibly more than ever before, to the unexpected. At times I felt I was being unravelled, but in truth, I see it now as a deeper weaving. Every day was filled with occurrences beyond my imagination. I flowed in the hands of others and with the landscape itself. I learned to trust not in certainty, but in the wild and generous rhythms of people and place. Even in the most precarious moments, there is beauty in being held, and in being part of something far larger than our minds can conceive.
So, dear reader, whatever situation or challenge life presents to you: surrender, trust and see what magic can unfold
Thank you, to all who were touched the core and edges of our adventure; to Scott Wurtzbacher for the suggestion (Inspire Campfire), to ICE trikes, ZTrikes (handbike attachment), and GM4X for prep and repair, to Badri our guide (Travel Nepal – Himalayas Treks), to the Basnet family (who formed the majority of our porter team), to Colin Bruce (Braemar Mountain Sports), to dear friends from Scotland (Vicky Sherwood, whose school St Leonard’s in St Andrews gave her term-time out to join me), to Clare Brown for her deep support and room-sharing), to new friends in our team (Sam, Keith, Ryan, Julian, Michelle, Clare, Shiv, Raul, Viktor, Kevin and Joey) and to every single person that supported us along the way (Olga, Dave Durkan, Jo Chaffer, Sonam, Anguru, Himalayan Single Track…the list is long and sorry if I have missed a specific mention!).