Kirstie Ennis, Marine who lost leg in Afghanistan, keeps climbing

Kirstie Ennis has made a life out of getting back up.

The Glenwood Springs resident is a Marine Corps veteran who lost her left leg and suffered other serious injuries in a helicopter crash on her second tour in Afghanistan in 2012. But in the wake of that life-altering trauma, the 33-year-old found a calling as a world-class mountaineer, competitive snowboarder and leader of a non-profit focused on outdoor therapy.

Ennis has conquered six of the Seven Summits, and her newfound fire on the mountain was evident, falls and all, from her first big climb at Mount Kilimanjaro in 2017.

“You would hear her fall or stumble and it would sound like it hurt,” recalled ex-NFLer Chris Long, who climbed Kilimanjaro with Ennis as part of a group with the non-profit Waterboys. “But in Kirstie fashion, it was like, help her up at your own risk. Because she was going to be like, ‘Get the (expletive) out of my way.’

“On the descent, we had to get down a scree and walk through a bunch of ravines and dry creeks that are difficult for anybody, and for an amputee, it’s not very fun at all. … But she just put her head down. She was motoring through it and she was not going to be denied. That’s the way she was from the time she stepped on the mountain to the time she got down to the parking lot. And that’s the way she lives her life.”