TEGA CAY, S.C. — A local veteran and Purple Heart recipient who served our country fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan is now taking things one step further -- he’s on a mission to climb all seven summits worldwide, from Mount Everest to Kilimanjaro to Mount Vinson.
Benajamin Breckheimer has nearly completed them all, and this weekend, he plans to do just that as he climbs Mount Denali, setting a Guinness World Record.
“I never thought my story would inspire others,” he said.
He has been training in his Tega Cay neighborhood for the climb of a lifetime.
Breckheimer headed to Alaska to hike Mount Denali, and when he reaches the summit, it will make him a world record holder as the first Purple Heart recipient and combat vet to scale the seven summits of the world, the highest peak on each of the seven continents.
He’s been looking forward to completing a journey that almost never began.
In 2009, while on deployment in Afghanistan, an IED exploded, shattering his leg.
“I remember in the driver’s seat as they were extracting me, and I didn’t see anything below my right knee, and I just kind of wrote it off as it was gone,” Breckheimer said.
He spent four years in a limb salvage program, learning how to walk again. The road to recovery was more than just physically painful.
“I started drinking heavily, suicidal thoughts, tendencies, you name it,” Breckheimer said. “I had a handgun in my lap. I was just seconds away from putting the gun to my head.”
Breckheimer put the gun down.
“That’s when I decided I needed to do something with myself, so I got into mountaineering of all things,” he said.
He went from his lowest point to the highest peak in the world, climbing Mount Everest in 2017 after surviving the 2015 Avalanche on Everest.
Breckheimer made it his mission to climb Mount Everest, which he did.
He finds motivation scaling summits with the legs doctors worked so hard to save. And hikes he dedicated to the fallen.
“A big part of my climbing is for our brothers and sisters who aren’t home anymore. Who don’t have an opportunity to do such a thing,” Breckheimer said. “So, it’s turned into honoring them.”
The journey has taken him all over the globe, from Argentina to Antarctica, Australia and now to Alaska.
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But his story has brought others along. He speaks to veterans and to active duty service members at military bases around the country, knowing that everyone has their own mountain to summit.
“Everyone has their own Everest. It could just be waking up and transferring yourself to a wheelchair,” Breckheimer said.
He hopes that his climbs show others that whether it’s an actual mountain or a symbolic one, the journey starts the same way -- with a single step.
“The end game is just hoping that other people are inspired by my story and can challenge themselves,” Breckheimer said.
He leaves on Saturday and is hoping to reach the Summit around June 15. It takes about three weeks to reach the top and come back down.
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