BOULDER, COLO. — When Hugh Herr scrambled up a steep rock face last week, it signaled a victory of high tech and high courage over physical limitations.
Herr, 26, lost both legs below the knee in a 1982 mountaineering accident.
But on Thursday, after strapping on a pair of artificial limbs of his own design, the veteran climber ascended the first 100 feet of the Bastille formation at Eldorado Canyon State Park. Below, people who were watching stood open-mouthed.
``I don`t agree with people who say there are limitations, physical handicaps,`` Herr said after rapelling his way back down. ``It`s not something that should be accepted. There are no handicapped people; there are only handicapped technologies.``
Herr, who begins postgraduate studies this fall at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will bring with him a belief that technology can improve the lives of leg amputees. In the U.S. alone, there are hundreds of thousands of leg amputees, he said.
Along with University of Colorado engineering professor Igor Gamow, Herr is working on an artificial foot that will allow him to run at speeds comparable to people with feet of flesh and bone. The two also are designing a shoe they hope will revolutionize the industry by taking runners` performance to new levels.
``There is a lot to do in prosthetics,`` Gamow said. ``They`re better than the old peg legs, but not much given that we can walk on the moon.``
Herr lost his lower legs, and nearly his life, when he and a friend got lost in a subzero blizzard on a weekend ice-climbing trip in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Herr stepped into the water of a frozen-over creek. He endured three days with frozen legs before rescuers found him.
When doctors told Herr, already an accomplished rock climber, that all they could promise was that he would be able to walk, he was convinced he would climb again. Two weeks after leaving the hospital, he was back on the rocks.
Herr soon turned his considerable energy to removing the barrier that was holding him back: artificial legs designed for senior citizens who merely wanted to walk or dance.
``I just wasn`t satisfied with the status quo in prosthetics,`` he said.
Working with wood, plastic, rubber and metal alloys, Herr developed a series of legs and feet for different types of climbing. He earned the nickname ``the Mechanical Boy`` among climbers in his native Pennsylvania.
Herr now climbs with legs that have a patented socket, lightweight metal extensions and small feet made of wood and plastic with rubber tips that grip rocks.
While his size-5 feet give him an advantage over other climbers, he crafted a pair of wedge-shaped feet for climbing small fissures.
He said he can feel even the slightest vibration in his ``foot,`` and knows as quickly as any other climber if he is slipping.
Gamow, who met Herr through a mutual friend about a year ago, calls it a miracle, brought about by Herr`s unique combination of talent and
determination. Adding his own knowledge of the mechanics of movement in animals could produce a breakthrough in human performance, Gamow said.
The goal for amputees always has been to be as mobile as non-amputees, Gamow said. Herr ``would like to, in a sense, be better.``