Chris Meloche |
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When I was first diagnosed with type I diabetes in 1986 I have to admit that I was relieved. This was a disease that people lived with; I wasn’t going to die the next day in spite of how ill I felt. I was lucky to have excellent education at that time. My doctor told me that I should be able to do anything that I wanted to as long as I learned all the management techniques and paid attention to monitoring my blood sugar. At the time I was in high school and that meant I could keep running cross-country and track and I could keep wrestling. As a 15 year old Boy Scout though my real passion was outdoors; camping, hiking, orienteering, and scrambling on rocks whenever trip took me away from my home in Dexter, Michigan.
When I went off to college at Michigan State University to study botany I fell in with a crowd that did a lot of rock climbing at the local crag in Grand Ledge and a lot of caving in southern Indiana. Climbing quickly became a passion and my aspirations grew from just doing the harder climbs at Grand Ledge to climbing real mountains and climbing snow and ice in addition to rock. These goals became a real possibility when I moved to Colorado to pursue a Ph.D. studying alpine plants. Over the years inconvenient location and the demands of work and school have been much bigger obstacles to the adventure of meeting my climbing goals than diabetes has been.
In pursuit of fun and adventure in the mountains over the last several years I have reached the summits of 43 of Colorado’s 54 peaks over 14,000 ft. climbing in all four seasons. I've climbed classic routes on the Grand Teton and Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, the Petit Grepon in Colorado, Mt. Hood in Oregon, and last year I summited El Pico de Orizaba in Mexico with my wife Meriah. I have participated in these activities with a number of friends and family members who have all come to realize that diabetes doesn’t need to hold anyone back. With switching over to insulin pump therapy I feel freer than ever to pursue my passion of mountaineering and to spread the word about how people with diabetes really can do anything that they dream.
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