Wampler's Ascent

In my psych 4 class, I was assigned to watch a movie and type a response to it. In the movie Wampler’s Ascent, Steve Wampler becomes the first man with a disability to climb El Capitan. Steve has lived with cerebral palsy all of his life and has spent 95% of the time in a wheelchair. The movie documents Steve's journey climbing 7,569ft in a wheelchair. Wampler was climbing El Capitan for a charity for children with disabilities similar to his. His journey throughout the movie is incredibly inspiring. Wampler has lived with cerebral palsy, but that has never stopped him from living a normal life. It would not be right to say that he struggles with the disability or suffers from it because he is living his life like anyone else would. He has a wife and kids and he has such strong ambition that is admirable to anyone. In the movie, Wampler is on the rock for six days and in those six days, there is a change in his attitude. He endures through many difficulties such as his seizures, the soreness from using his upper body strength to pull himself up, and the mental, emotional, and physical drainage. However, he never gave up. He continued to climb and he proved that anyone can achieve anything whether you have a disability or not. What I found most fascinating was his ambition and his passion. He has so much ambition to accomplish something and puts passion into everything that he does. His positivity has a domino effect, it spreads through person to person and it is truly inspiring. Most of the time when someone sees someone with a disability in a wheelchair they tend to have sympathy and feel sorry for them, but Wampler does the opposite. He shows people that he is just like any other person. He not a wheelchair person, he is just someone that is in a wheelchair. Wampler repeatedly says “mind over matter” whenever he would get too tired and felt like he could not climb anymore. I was able to relate to this because that is something that I would say to myself whenever I wanted to stop running in a race. With this, Wampler once again proves that our disabilities, or our bodies, or our strength do not determine what we can or cannot do. Our minds are what determine what we can do and accomplish. The movie Wampler’s Acsent was inspirational and I hope you get a chance to watch it!