Right before my injury actually, you know, I was a climbing ranger in our parks and I was like,

I mean, I don't know how long I can do this job. I can do it until my legs fall off. But eventually you're going to grow, oh, I know, and it's funny that I've released to say that. I'm like, yeah, I can fall off. Just kind of stopped working. But as aging goes, I was like,

my knees were already hurting at 36,

hiking up longs peak every freaking day.

Just like how long much longer can I do this in my body? Welcome to Trailhead, a trail runner nation. We go on virtual trail runs every week and invite you to join us. Hopefully you'll be able to learn something about yourself and as an athlete become better, stronger, faster, enjoy it more and maybe become a better human being. And today we're doing aging as an athlete. And if you're having a birthday plan to have a birthday in the future, you're part of the aging athlete series. So come along and we're going to learn something today. I really enjoyed this discussion. Welcome to another edition of Trail Renonation. My name is Don Freeman. I'm Chrissy Male. And I'm Scott War and this is another edition of our aging as an athlete series. It's a mini series actually that we started last year in 2025. It's co-hosted by Ultra Running Legend Chrissy Male and it basically assumes that everyone listening to this episode is aging. You're getting older and with that comes change and we're trying to navigate that change regardless of if you're in your 20s, 30s, 60s, 90s, 120s. We're all aging and we all have these challenges that come with aging. And that's what this mini series is about. This is our ninth episode of the aging as an athlete series. And we have a lot of really cool guests to come on and kind of help us navigate those changes. Chrissy joined us on all of these episodes and she has a new guest for us this episode. Chrissy, who do you have for us this week? I'm super excited to invite Quinn Brett on. And we met through Instagram. I don't have many of those relationships in my life that I would say started on social media. They've been more of a follow. And I've been following Quinn for a while and more recently there was a series that Patagonia Trail running did about my run at High Lonesome two years ago. And I talk in depth about well as much as you can in an Instagram caption, how this life shift of Perry Manipause has been a factor in my racing and athletic career and perspective on the world and how things are going. And Gwen put a really interesting comment and I went back, I was like, I've been following Quinn for years now about her experience as a paraplegic athlete. So I don't know Quinn.

I was gonna read her bio so the audience has about as much information as I did. I did a quick call with her right before the holidays to say, hey, is there anything you don't wanna talk about? Can we just get to know you on the podcast? And I think we were both running off to different holiday things. We're like, yeah, good, here we go. So here we are mid-January recording with this really cool human.

Quinn Brett grew up in New Hope, Minnesota after graduating with the degree in Psychology and Leadership from the University of Minnesota. She belined Estus Park where she still lives. I'm gonna shorten this because I'd rather Quinn talk about her life than me just read through a bio. I pulled off her website. She's super well-educated, master's degree in education, educational, physical psychology and social studies and she spent a lot of time in Rocky Mountain National Park traveling and guiding and doing search and rescue and in 2017 Quinn took a large climbing fall on LCAP in Yosemite and sustained a T11, a SIA spinal cord injury. So she still is motivated to move through the outdoor wilderness space and is learning how to do so with the spinal cord injury and also going through navigating the life changes that happen with aging. We have an expert on spines and that's Dr. Don Freeman here. What does that mean? What was it? T11? Don, what is that? I don't know her injury that she's about to tell us about, but we'll find out more. There are trials to move up and down and protected by the spinal cord. And if you have a problem with a vertebrae fracture, misalignment, something into that vertebrae, it can pinch off that communication of those nerves and where it serves below, which is probably the lower extremities might be problematic, but we're going to learn more from Quinn right now. Yeah, exactly. It's a, so T is thoracic. So we have our cervical vertebrae, we have our thoracic vertebrae, our lumbar, and our sacral. And so I was near... very near the bottom of my thoracic. So about belly button level, a little bit lower. And Asia is the American Spinal Court Injury Association, it's A-I-S-I-A. That is their, like, rubric for scoring. So if you have no sensation or motor function below your level of injury, you're considered to be in Asia A, which is me. So I can't feel, you can tickle my foot, can't feel it, you can put it in hot water, can't feel it. And I don't move. Although there's a lot of nuances about that, like I have a lot of spasticity, so in fact, my calves do twitch, but it's uncontrollable, unbeknownst to me. Oh, I'd make an argument, you still move. I've seen on your Instagram different things you are getting out there and making movement happen as part of your life. still love love the outdoors. Hey, Quinn, I'm just curious. Before the injury, your lifelong endurance athlete and an elite climber, before the injury or the recovery, how did you define being an endurance athlete and how did that, how did you define that as an athlete? I guess for me endurance was just like the ability to move all day every day and to not, I guess in comparison to like some of my climbing partners, I used to joke about like the messener diet. Like you just, like you have to be able to function without food and water and keep, like keep your brain, like especially when you're climbing in a high open environment, like you have to be able to keep your brain and you're aware with all. So to me, that defined who I was, like I wasn't the maybe the fastest, but I was able to move all day every day and keep my shit together mostly. So more of a psychological part of endurance, I mean, that you seem like that was, yeah. There's more of an important part of it, right? Yeah, well, especially in the

... So more of a psychological part of endurance, I mean, that you seem like that was,

yeah.

There's more of an important part of it, right? Yeah, well, especially in the environment that I was playing in. And maybe my clienting partner is listening and like, I remember that one time you freaked out, Gwen. Like I wasn't, I wasn't perfect by any means. But like I could go without a lot of food and water and just keep moving, moving, moving, moving and just like efficiency I suppose.

When how much of your your degree in psychology aided you in your endurance events because you understand how the mind works, you understand what it's saying to you, you can talk to it in an intelligent way and maybe you can even negotiate a little bit with your brain. A lot of us are out there just battling whatever it's telling us, but you have some insight of what's going on. Yeah, and maybe it's a little bit of the psychology brain, but also like I was really into yoga and yoga training. And so I mean, I remember this one endurance longer run that I did from this yoga center that I was in in Mexico to Toto Santhos. It was like an 18 mile run. And my knee was hurting, and you just kind of like, well, this is how it is now. And you just state that phrase, and then knowing that like it is now, and it could be for the next 18 miles, but it might not be. So just shift your gate a little bit and see what happens. I'm interested in hearing about this event that happened at El Capitan. If maybe you could tell us a little bit about that so we understand what you've worked through. Yeah, sure. So I was a climber and have a few different speed records on LCAP and across the globe on different mountains and first descents and all that kind of stuff. And so we were on a training lap of sorts on climbing the nose on LCAP-10 in Yosemite National Park. I really wanted for a few years I've been trying to convince a female partner to do this endeavor called the Triple Crown, which no female team had yet done. Only male teams had done, which is climbing Al Cap, Half-Dome and Walkins, the three biggest walls in Yosemite in less than 24 hours.

And I really wanted to do that endeavor. And so I finally had a partner and her and I had the previous year had done a pretty big endeavor that again, no female or male team had ever done called seven. We climbed to all the big walls in Yosemite in a week, so back to back to back days. just climb a big wall, come down next day, do it again, do it again, do it again.

And so Josie and I had had a really good a week, so back to back to back days. It just climb a big wall, come down next day, do it again,

do it again, do it again. And so Josie and I had had a really good repertoire as partners, and so she agreed to try to do this triple crown. And so we were doing a lap on the nose for time. We just wanted to get our systems dialed and know that we could do this climb in under six hours. And this day, yeah, I was near the end of my block of leading.

So usually I lead the first half of the mountain and she leads the second half. I had maybe 30 or 40 feet left of my lead block and a foot slipped and I didn't have any gear below me because that pitch has this pendulum swing that you do at the end and so you don't even a gear. Essentially,

I didn't have any gear and I took a hundred foot fall and I had a flake of rock below me, which then burst fractured my T12 vertebrae, sent pieces of my spinal column into my spinal cord and became paralyzed from the waist down. That is amazing that you survived one, I would think. and number two, that now you're halfway up this wall and have this major injury. How did they get you off the wall and how did they get you down to the hospital or wherever you went? Yep, so luckily Josie, my climbing partner, it was a member of Search and Rescue there in Yosemite National Park. So she knew who to call, immediately on speed dial, I called the dispatch and they weren't as responsive as she wanted. So she just called the direct line and said, hey, and I was staying at search and rescue's house. So these are all my friends. So she just called and said, hey, Quinn's up here. We're 100,000 feet up on our cap. And so they initiated a rescue. And so they did a short haul, which means like a calm, like a dope on a rope. Somebody is dangling beneath a helicopter from Yosemite Meadows. Dengles in, they swing him into the wall with all of this gear, like the litter basket that they eventually loaded me in. And then once I'm in it, they attach it all. And he and I swung away from the wall

and then got lower down into the meadow. And then I got transferred to another helicopter that took me to the hospital. Were you conscious during this time? I wasn't at the beginning, but I did wake up behind the flake where I had fallen. And yeah, the rescue was there. And I think I said something like, I fucked up. I can't feel my legs.

And then they transfer, yeah, and then when they went to,

when they were transferring me helicopters Of course, I work shirts and rescue and Rocky Mountain National Park. So this exact job is my job I knew that they're transferring me and I know how much helicopter rides are and so my first Words when they were transferring me were like, hey, I can't afford it. I'm like,, yeah, that's too bad. Yeah, we have payment plans. Don't worry. The good news is you can make payments. So how long did you from that spot where you're waiting for the first helicopter? How much time did you spend waiting? Because I would imagine even a minute would feel like an hour. Yeah, I think that I mean, they worked pretty hard and fast. and there always as a contingency plan. And so the winds were picking up and it wasn't sure if the helicopter could fly. I think all said and told I fell around noon on that Wednesday. And I think I was in the metal by two. So they worked off fast. Wow. Talk to us a little bit about the subsequent few days. After you're finally in the hospital and they're taking MRIs and CAT scans and coming to the realization that there's a real serious issue here. Tell us about how your psychology and mind was working through those last those few days. Well, it wasn't the most present for some reason, the hospital that they flew me to did not have the hardware to do the initial back surgery, which is wild to me that they didn't just immediately transfer because usually somebody comes in like me and I'm immediately in surgery and they're putting metal in your back and they're taking care of you. So I actually was kind of in and out of coherency for the for the first five days because they didn't do my surgery for five days. And so when I finally had that surgery, yeah, and then you come to and there, I do remember my folks finally arriving there and I don't know, I just you're always in I think denial., yeah, I don't even know that I was,

I knew that they had said I was paralyzed, but your brain is so loopy that you, that didn't register for probably many weeks at that time. And then when it starts, yeah, I mean, and I, I'm like, I feel like I'm a smart human, but also I feel like I'm very naive and dumb human in a lot of other ways. And so maybe I'm just a slower process of that or maybe it was denial is very sick of

Eventually the toes will wiggle. I think I don't know. Right. No, that makes sense to me that there would be that the way you described yourself with the push through mentality that if I push hard enough, I'll get through this that that would be adding on to that thick, I like how you describe that that thick layer of denial. Mm-hmm. How long ago did this happen? This injury my fall day was October 11th, 2017. Mm-hmm. So it's been just over eight years. Now tell us a little bit as listeners are listening to this. And as we all age, we come across these issues and problems, right? You know, a niggle there. You know, our bodies change here or there. And we're trying to navigate these chains. That's the purpose of this episode in this series. Obviously, yours happened catastrophically and abruptly. us through through how, once you finally, a couple of weeks later, had to realize that this is your new identity that you no longer have the use of your legs, but you also have this identity as an endurance sports athlete and an elite climber. How did you rationalize those two? And at what point did you decide that they are not mutually exclusive, that they can actually be one person? I don't know if that is totally gone yet or I'm totally healed from that narrative yet. While I might have done all the work internally, there's still a lot in society that says, I can't and I don't belong. Like, yeah, like there's still a lot of things that I'd like to do. And I like, like I even called the rate, I don't know how sideways we want to get, but I called a race director recently because I want to do this off road triathlon. But I don't know. And he's like, oh, yeah, we have a lot of disabled athletes.

And I was like, yeah, we have amputees.

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