Corinne Hutton, 48, completed her 5-day ascent of the highest free-standing mountain in the world on Friday, and is believed to be the first female quadruple amputee to do so.
Corinne, who has a young 10-year-old son, suffered a bad cough in 2013, which turned out to be pneumonia. This led to Sepsis and she was given just a 5% chance of survival. Doctors worked tirelessly, saving what they could of Corinne’s organs. She survived, but her hands and feet had been starved of oxygen for so long that there was no choice other than amputation.
Corinne was the first female quadruple amputee to summit Ben Nevis, and this is the latest in a string of challenges and accomplishments that she has taken on since losing her hands and lower legs. An operation to remove the majority of a lung in 2017 came months before The London Triathlon, but she refused to let that stop her and crossed the finish line in one hour and 52 minutes.
Kilimanjaro is a dormant volcano in Tanzania. At around 20,000ft above sea level, it is the highest mountain in Africa and the highest free-standing mountain in the world.
Ten fundraisers joined Corinne on the climb all to raise money for Finding Your Feet, a charity supporting amputees started by Corinne in 2014 following her own amputations. The team has raised over ÂŁ30,000 so far, with the number still growing as support for Corinne pours in from all over the world.
The team completed their descent on Sunday 7th October and returned to Glasgow on Wednesday 10th.
“I went into this to encourage people to be the best they possibly can be, to prove that I’m not “disabled” and to raise money to support the amputee community. The support I’ve received from back home and from people all over has kept me going. I managed to see the incredible support coming in, and that’s what got me to the top.
I knew the climb would be hard on prosthetics, and altitude may be a problem with only having one and 1/3 lungs. What I didn’t understand was how much it would take out of me every minute of the day, even when we weren’t climbing.
Everyone that was with me was incredible. They’ve all done something fantastic for charity so they deserve a lot of credit. They were there to help me when I needed it.
Hopefully this shows anyone, not just amputees, that you can go out and conquer your own mountain, whatever that may be.
Now I’m looking forward to a shower. We’re all filthy, but on the plus side I don’t have fingers to run through my hair or any fingernails to get dirty!”