Home

10%

Gretchen Evans

Team Unbroken

By 29029 Everesting

January 26^th, 2024

In the trenches of life’s adventures and on the slopes of 29029, we’re not afraid of failure, we’re afraid of regret.

That’s part of the ethos that drives us to tackle epic challenges.

When I say us, I mean Team Unbroken, and when I say epic challenges, I mean things like The World’s Toughest Race, the Baatan Memorial Death March, Rim-to-Rim, and 29029 Everesting.

But I’m getting ahead of myself - first a quick background on the path that led me to 29029 Stratton.

I spent 27 years of my life in the army, which came to an end in 2006 when I was caught in a rocket blast in Afghanistan. I narrowly escaped with my life. I paid a price, coming home with a traumatic brain injury, extensive internal injuries, and complete loss of hearing.

The transition from military to civilian life is never easy, but it was even more challenging with the extent of my injuries and PTSD. It took some time, but eventually I found purpose and meaning again by working to support other veterans in their transition to civilian life.

As I continued my own transition into civilian life, I had become friends with Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind man to summit Mount Everest, and he was the first person to put the idea of entering The World’s Toughest Race in my ear.

That was the beginning of Team Unbroken.

I assembled a team of wounded combat veterans, and filled out the mountains of paperwork. They had one small section that asked to list any previous injuries any team members had sustained. There was barely any room to fill it out, which I realized was because people who enter the World’s Toughest Race don’t usually have injuries - they are high-performance athletes who barely have hang-nails!

But not us.

It took four pages for me to list the injuries to our team.

“On paper, we are a trainwreck, but we’d actually accomplished so much.”

That was one of the many lines I used to plead our case to the event organizers during a lengthy back-and-forth after our application was initially rejected.

“If you tell us no, you’re telling everybody out there who has a life-altering injury, illness or trauma what they can and can’t do. And you don’t get to do that, we get to choose that for ourselves.” I said.

“Gretchen, when you put it like that, you make me sound like an asshole…”

“It’s simple then,” I replied, “Don’t be an asshole.”

We were in.

We had no money, no sponsors and no funding. Our first adventure race was the biggest adventure race out there.

We looked like a bunch of ragamuffins at the startline - almost like the toys from the misfit island in the Rudolph movie.

It looked like we didn’t belong.

But we did! We gave it our all, fording rivers, cutting through dense jungle, and climbing steep slopes before eventually missing a time cut-off.

But it was still a victory for us - we’d opened a door that had been closed before.

The need for adventure and challenge was ignited in us all. Team Unbroken wasn’t one-and-done - we were looking for more now!

The name Team Unbroken comes from a desire to challenge the narratives around anybody who is disabled.

So many people have a similar reaction when they learn about my disabilities. They act differently around me - gentle - as if I’m fragile.

I know it comes from a good place, but I don’t want to be pitied.

I might look broken, but I’m not.

For every disability that I got, I added an ability to make up for it.

I became deaf, but I learned to read lips so well that many people don’t even realize I can’t hear.

I have a brain injury that impacted my short-term memory, but I became an expert note-taker that chronicles everything in perfect order so I can remember.

I developed these abilities to make up for the ones I had lost.

I’m not disabled, I’m just somebody with mixed abilities.

Just like everybody else on Team Unbroken.

When we do hard things, whether it’s rucking a marathon, hiking for days on end on the Appalachian Trail, or navigating the jungles of Fiji, we always hope to learn a little more about ourselves.

If you just blow through life and take the easy path, you miss so much.

You need to put yourself in situations that challenge who you are and what you believe in.

We are better people when we require ourselves to engage our grit.

And that’s why we chose 29029 Stratton as another epic challenge in 2023.

Stratton was steep, and not necessarily scenic given the conditions.

Every step was a battle against the elements. Relentless rain started early in the event, turning trails into rivers.

All I had to focus on were my steps - one muddy foot at a time.

It didn’t take long before there wasn’t really a path anymore. There were huge puddles everywhere from the torrential rain, and people had started straying off the path, trying to find traction and drier ground wherever they could.

But not us - we decided to go straight through. The quickest way to the top was straight up.

It was a slog.

We managed what we could, and accepted what we couldn’t.

One step at a time, we worked towards the summit.

It’s easier to quit on yourself when you’re by yourself.

In the military, we had something called a rope-team. When it came time to traverse challenging and dangerous terrain, we would all tie into a rope, connecting each team member. It could come in use on mountains, in snow, or crossing rivers, and if one of us fell, the others would stand firm and help the fallen member get back up. Then, as a team, we would continue on.

Team Unbroken is a metaphorical rope team. It’s hard to quit on yourself when you’re roped to other people.

Having my teammates around me - and being around them - helped us all. When one faltered, the rest helped. When one felt like they couldn’t keep climbing, the rest helped propel them forward and upwards.

It kept me climbing. It kept us climbing.

At 10 pm, the rain was still falling, of course, as we completed our 10th ascent.

Only 7 to go, but the temperatures had really started dropping. I was wet. I was cold.

I needed rest.

My team decided to keep climbing - they wanted to get to 13 before taking a break - so I wished them well, and went to get some shut-eye.

Normally, our metaphorical rope team wouldn’t split up, but 29029 was different than any other challenge we had done.

29029 might be the only event where you can find a rope team at any point. The community - climbers, volunteers, and staff - bring you in, tying you onto their metaphorical rope.

They’ll walk alongside you. They’ll offer encouragement. They’ll help you out of a bind. They’ll get you to the summit.

The 29029 community makes it nearly impossible to quit on yourself.

So it wasn’t a problem that I was without my team when I woke up at 3 am to continue climbing.

The mud was getting deeper - in sections up to my knees - but I was reenergized after rest, and before I knew it, I’d knocked out 3 ascents.

Bang, bang, bang.

As I got to the ascent boards to burn in my 13th brand, event staff saw me shaking uncontrollably. I could barely hold the brand steady against the board!

That was when I realized that I was actually freezing cold! I had been so laser-focused on climbing that I wasn’t thinking about my temperature.

“Gretchen, we can’t let you go back on the mountain until you check in with the medical team. You’re uncontrollably shaking and we don’t want you to go into hypothermia."

I went inside, figuring I’d sit under a thermal blanket, have a hot soup, and hit the mountain again.

They sat me down and took my core temperature.

86 degrees.

It wasn’t just hypothermia, I was bordering on severe hypothermia.

“You’re not going back out.”

I wanted to get back out there, and although it was evident for everybody around me, I still thought I could.

Okay, fine… I’ll wait a little while, warm up, and see what happens. There’s still time…

But I never did get back out on the mountain. Of course, in hindsight, it was absolutely the right call by the medical team, but in the moment, I was disappointed.

I wanted to get back on the mountain, but had to settle for supporting the rest of my team and the rest of the 29029 community instead.

13 ascents would be my final tally.

Dan, Brittany and Jackie - the rest of Team Unbroken, all got their Red Hats. It was a wonderful achievement, and I found a lot of excitement and pride in them!

But for me, I knew I couldn’t leave the mountain unvanquished.

I turned to the rest of the team and said, “Do you guys want to do this again?”

When I choose races and challenges for the year, I don’t like to do any that I like to call self-licking ice cream cones.

You know the ones - events where it’s all about the rankings, all about someone winning, all about others having to lose.

I want events that elevate my life - events that challenge me, push me, and raise me to another level.

I want events that take courage just to show up. I want events that promise a challenge so monumental that no matter how far you make it, it’s a massive achievement.

I love the challenge of 29029. If you don’t finish, you still get recognized for showing up. There are milestones along the way, and that’s really powerful because everybody’s finish line looks a little different.

You can be as prepared as you can be - you can be as physically fit as ever - but there’s still an X-factor. There are still unknown obstacles, that once known, can be nearly insurmountable no matter your level of preparedness.

In Stratton, that x-factor was the weather.

I’m not afraid of failure, but I am afraid of regret.

And I don’t want to regret letting a mountain beat me, so in 2024, I’ll be in Whistler for another 29029, with more members of Team Unbroken, looking for that Red Hat!