Adventures

Since his spinal cord injury, Ed has used adventure as a way to keep testing what’s possible.

That has included crossing Iceland’s Vatnajökull ice cap, climbing 4,000m peaks in the Alps, completing a first ascent in Kyrgyzstan, taking on long-distance endurance challenges and adapting equipment to make places accessible that often aren’t designed to be.

Along the way, he’s become an advocate for the role adventure and time outdoors can play in rebuilding confidence, perspective and a sense of possibility.

Here are a few of the adventures he’s taken on.

A lone figure on a grassy ridge beneath mountain peaks and a bright clouded sky

2018 · The First Mountain

On the first anniversary of the accident, a year to the day after doctors said he might never walk again, Ed stood on the summit of the highest mountain in Wales. It took most of the day. It also set the direction for everything since.

2019 · Mera Peak, Nepal, 6,476m

The first big mountain after the injury: a 6,476m Himalayan peak, and proof, mostly to Ed, that altitude and a spinal cord injury could coexist. The plans got bigger from here.

2020 · Gran Paradiso, Italy, 4,061m

Ed's first experience of mountaineering proper: crampons, ropes and a long summit ridge, three years after intensive care.

Ed Jackson in full mountain kit climbing the stairs at home during his 2020 Everest challenge

2020 · Everest, at home

When lockdown cancelled the mountains, Ed climbed the height of Everest on his parents’ staircase: 8,849 vertical metres, raising more than £41,000 for charity. Not the view he wanted, but the point was never the view.

2022 · Himlung Himal, Nepal, 7,126m

The expedition that became The Mountain Within Me. Ed reached 6,800m, a world record for the highest altitude achieved by someone with a spinal cord injury, spent a night in the open at minus 30, and came home by helicopter. Universal Pictures released the film in 2024; it is currently on Prime Video and Apple TV.

2023 · Vatnajökull, Iceland: the Alpha crossing

The first all-disabled crossing of Europe’s largest ice cap. Three men, one rope and a lot of weather, filmed by Berghaus.

2024 · The Matterhorn

One of the most recognisable mountains on earth, and a different kind of problem: less altitude, more precision, and no forgiving ground anywhere.

SHORT FILM COMING SOON

Ed Jackson trekking with poles towards scree-covered mountains on the Hope Peak expedition

2025 · Hope Peak, Kyrgyzstan: a first ascent

An unclimbed peak: no route description, no summit photographs, no certainty it would go. Ed and the team made the first ascent. Very few people get to stand somewhere nobody has stood and nowhere in history has ever seen it happen first by someone with a disability.

FILM COMING SOON

Adapting

Standard mountaineering kit assumes a standard body. With Berghaus, Ed has helped develop adaptive kit that opens the mountains to people with disabilities, tested on every expedition on this page.

Where it leads

Ed founded Millimetres 2 Mountains, a charity that uses the outdoors to help people rebuild after trauma. Some of the people on these expeditions are M2M beneficiaries partway through their own recoveries. Recovery happens millimetres at a time; the mountains are where it adds up.

Visit the charity

The mountains are where the material comes from. The talks are where it becomes useful. To book Ed: contact@edjackson8.com.

Book Ed

To book Ed for speaking, broadcasting or media, email contact@edjackson8.com.

Accessibility