Brian Reynolds told his story to producer Caro Rolando for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I was laying on the ground. My pack was beside me. I was thinking I’d probably climb out of the canyon without that pack on my back and just leave it there as a total loss. I didn’t know how I was gonna get to the top, but I knew that I was gonna get to the top even if it required crawling.
I grew up outside of Boston, and currently I live in New Jersey. When I was four, I contracted a rare disease called meningococcemia, which is a bacterial-based version of meningitis. And even now in 2023, it’s still a very deadly disease with a very high fatality rate. But back in the early ‘90s, it was an under ten percent survival rate. So when I say I’m lucky to have only lost two legs below the knee, I truly mean I’m lucky.
The prosthetic technology that I had growing up that was available to me was just not conducive to long bursts of hiking, running, walking, or anything in between. I had a lot of chronic sores on my legs and honestly, with all of that, I had no drive to…
