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ST. GEORGE — About 14 years after suffering his first of two neck breaks, Nathan Ogden rappelled down a more than 150-foot drop as a quadriplegic.
Equipped with a full-body harness and joined by an assistant, Ogden made the descent, as did his wife and four children Saturday.
“There’s not much that gets my heart pumping anymore. ... I’m not afraid of a whole lot, because ... what’s the worst that can happen, I break my neck again, third time?” Ogden said.
Ogden initially broke his neck while skiing with his brother-in-law in Bend, Oregon, just three days before Christmas. After coming off a jump wrong, he landed on his neck and shattered his C7 vertebrae, he said.
He made a goal to walk again, and he obtained full use of his arms and shoulders, most of his hands and a little bit of his legs. But in early 2003, he got pneumonia and ended up in the emergency room.
“So it was just myself and the X-ray tech in the room. And I’m unconscious still. And whatever happened, I don’t know. ... I fell off the X-ray table and broke my neck again,” Ogden said. “And this time it was higher up.”
Following his second neck break, he lost the use of his hands, triceps and all movement he had regained in his legs. When he first learned of his second break, he had a “bring it on” attitude, but when he didn’t see progress he said it mentally paralyzed him.
In spite of his challenges, Ogden’s paralysis hasn’t stopped him from snow skiing, water skiing, skydiving and more.
Ogden and his family traveled from their Virginia home to Utah, where they rappelled down Cougar Cliffs on Saturday. His wife, 16-year-old daughter, 15-year-old son, 11-year-old daughter and 9-year-old daughter participated. Only his son had tried rappelling before this trip.
“I was more impressed with them than I was with me,” Ogden said.
The man who assisted Ogden rappelled with him “so that as we’re going down he could kind of help push me off the wall, so I wasn’t just sliding down the cliff,” he said.
Ogden is a motivational speaker and recently finished writing a book titled “Unfrozen” that will soon be available on Amazon.com and his website. The book “goes into different ways that I have dealt with feeling frozen, feeling like you’re stuck, like you’re not getting where you want to be,” Ogden said.
