When Caroline Leon broke her back four years ago she never thought she’d be able to walk again let alone attempt to become the first person to climb the 15 highest peaks in the Middle East.
At the time, her injuries were so severe she wanted to give up. But after being confined to a wheelchair for six months as well as undergoing 14 surgeries and 23 blood transfusions, she slowly regained her ability to walk and came up with a plan to get not only her strength back but also her confidence.
While she’s still far from reaching her goal of climbing all 15 peaks, she has climbed 10 of them in Turkey, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. and is almost at the end of her journey.
The only problem? Navigating her travel to the currently hard-to-get-to countries of Iraq and Yemen and some security issues in Bahrain, and Palestine.
While she’s given up on her goal of climbing the 15 peaks in the shortest amount of time, she’d previously given herself 30 days to summit 15 peaks, she’s now planning out how to successfully scale the remaining ones on her list.
She joined us in the Esquire studio to share her journey since the accident.
