[gentle music]
[snow crunching]
- My name is Lori Schneider, and I'm a teacher,
and a mountain climber, and a motivational speaker.
I spent the first 18 years of my life growing up
in Janesville, Wisconsin.
Life in Wisconsin was very powerful for me.
It shaped me into a person who loved to get out into nature.
My first love of mountains came when I moved out to Colorado
when I was in my early twenties
and started to hike a lot of the trails
and do a lot of skiing and cross country skiing.
But really, my first mountain climb
happened many years later
when I climbed with my father in Africa.
Remember our first trip?
- That was on my 61st birthday. - I know it. [laughs]
- We climbed Kilimanjaro,
and that's us at the summit. - Yeah.
So, that was really the start of my mountaineering.
My father was the one who really
inspired me to get out and try things
that I probably wouldn't have normally done.
We rafted the Grand Canyon together.
We went to South America and climbed Mount Aconcagua.
So he's still very, very active at 87.
He's been really my mentor, my health mentor,
and adventure mentor my whole life.
[somber music]
I'll never forget the day.
It was January 4th, 1999.
And I woke up in the morning.
I realized that half of my body had gone numb overnight.
I called the doctor, and they had me come in for tests.
When I was told I had MS,
I thought I was immediately going to be wheelchair-bound.
I was so afraid.
I thought it was the end of... of life as I knew it.
[rock music]
That's when my climbing really accelerated
because I wanted to do it all and prove to myself that
I still had some control over my body.
Since being diagnosed with MS, I've climbed the Seven Summits,
which refers to the highest peak
on each of the seven continents.
Kilimanjaro in Africa,
Mount Aconcagua in South America,
Mount Elbrus in Europe,
Denali, or Mount McKinley as it was called in North America,
Mount Kosciuszko in Australia, the Vinson Massif in Antarctica,
and Mount Everest in Asia.
After finishing the Seven Summits,
I thought what I wanted to do
was help other people with this disease
realize that MS isn't a death sentence.
So, I started organizing trips
where a helicopter would drop people
on a high mountain peak.
They could hike for as long or as short as they wanted to,
and then a helicopter would take them back.
I think the misconception is
that someone with MS can't do anything.
And I hope that their employers, their friends, their families
will look at them as strong people and not weak.
I don't want people to think that
because I can be physically active
that they're not trying hard enough
because they aren't.
[treadmill running]
I am very fortunate to still have my mobility intact.
And really, over the last decade,
I've not had any symptoms.
Everyone's case of MS is very different.
And there are many people that are horribly disabled
from this disease.
I often wonder what would have happened in my life
had I not been diagnosed with MS.
When I got diagnosed,
I thought, "I want to climb the Seven Summits."
And even though it took me 16 years
to complete that final chapter,
it was something that I felt determined to do.
So, in many ways, it was such a catalyst
for me to live a more adventurous life
than I would have without it.
And I think that that has been my goal:
to live a better life with MS
than I could have conceived without it.