July 6, 2026: Climate change fueling wildfires; After electrocution, Melissa Strong climbs again

Summary

Colorado Matters – July 6, 2026

Climate Change and Colorado Wildfires; Melissa Strong’s Inspiring Return to Climbing

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Overview

In this episode of Colorado Matters, hosts Ryan Warner and Chandra Thomas Whitfield delve into two pressing and poignant Colorado stories. The first half examines Colorado’s escalating wildfire crisis—fueled by climate change, extreme weather, and evolving fire management—with in-depth analysis from wildfire journalist Michael Kodis, and voices of evacuees and firefighting leaders. The second half features climber/restaurateur Melissa Strong, who, after an electrocution nearly cost her life and hands, found humor and resilience in her painful journey back to bouldering—captured in her new memoir Climbing Through.

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Segment 1: Colorado’s Wildfire Crisis

Key Themes & Discussion Points

• Magnitude and Spread of Current Wildfires

  • Multiple large wildfires, notably the Aspen Acres Fire (~90,000 acres, 12% containment), Gold Mountain Fire (>27,000 acres, 0% containment), and Willow Fire (~4,000 acres).
  • Evacuations, community impacts, and ongoing uncertainty for many residents.

• Community Response and Resilience

  • Evacuee Michael Kringlen describes volunteering to help others after being displaced:
    • “Seeing the community come together to help each other... had me feeling like I need to do something to give back, too.” (01:41)
    • On children at the evacuation center: “They’re kids. They deserve to play and have fun. You know, they shouldn’t have their summer and their Fourth of July ruined by something that is out of everyone’s control.” (01:54)

• Tribute to Fallen Firefighters and the Hazards of the Job

  • Memorial for three wildland firefighters lost in the Snyder Fire on the Utah-Colorado border—Emily Barker, Nick Hutcherson, and Sydney Watson.
  • Brian Fennessy, head of the new U.S. Wildland Fire Service:
    • “Many people in this country have never met Sydney, Emily or Nick, but they feel that loss because they recognize the sacrifices they have made for our country.” (00:08 & 12:05)
  • Michael Kodis (Inside Climate News, wildfire expert) underscores:
    • “The moment they step into an aircraft, a firefighter’s chance of dying on the job goes up about tenfold.” (10:57)

• Root Causes: Climate Change and Weather Extremes

  • Paltry snowpack, early-season fuel drying, unpredictable high winds, and storm-driven lightning are creating unusually fast, destructive fire conditions.
  • Michael Kodis explains:
    • “We’ve seen a lot of unusual wind activity...driven by climate. When you’ve got very strong winds and they’re very changeable, the fire can move in any direction very quickly in those dry fuels unexpectedly and threaten firefighters.” (03:51)
    • On moisture and fast-growing vegetation: “One-hour fuels can be dried back out to the point of burning in about an hour when we return to drought...The most destructive fire in Colorado history, the Marshall Fire, was largely driven by fine fuels like that.” (05:16)
    • “As the climate has warmed, we’re actually seeing and anticipate an increase in the amount of lightning...as more and more moisture gets sucked up into a warmer atmosphere.” (06:18)
    • Fires are part of a natural cycle but are now more intense, destructive, and risky due to overgrowth and human settlement encroachment. (07:33)

• Firefighting Technology and Its Limitations

  • Growth of Colorado’s aerial firefighting fleet, but strong winds and terrain often render retardant and water drops less effective.
    • “A lot of the water or the fire retardant...is going to be blown away before it hits the ground...Fire retardant...is slowing the fire down. But you still have to get a crew on the ground...If they don’t get in there quickly enough, then that retardant...dries up and those fuels are going to be available to burn.” (09:18)

• Federal Firefighting Reorganization and Coordination Challenges

  • New U.S. Wildland Fire Service in Department of the Interior merges federal agencies for wildfire response. However, coordination with the still-separate U.S. Forest Service (Dept. of Agriculture) creates complexity and possible gaps.
    • “We’re really building an airplane to fight wildfires while we’re flying it with this new agency.” (14:55)
    • The fatal Snyder Fire involved both new USWFS and Forest Service staff, raising questions about communication and management in the reorganized system. (17:00)

• Looking Ahead: Climate Change, Policy, and Firefighting’s Future

  • “We have a huge handicap...We have gotten rid of so much climate science out of the federal government and we have a lot of leaders who don’t really believe in the science of climate change. That’s going to make the job...fighting fires much more difficult.” (18:15)

Notable Quotes

• “Trust your training, trust each other, and come home safely.”
  — Mike Morgan, State Fire Director, to firefighters (03:11)
• “It’s kind of like you’re going in to fight one dragon, but you’ve got several other dragons around you, and you don’t know what they’re doing.”
  — Michael Kodis, on the hazards of fighting multiple remote fires (13:24)
• “Are we going to be able to acknowledge how big a role climate change is playing in this...?”
  — Michael Kodis (18:15)

Important Timestamps

• Wildfire impact and evacuees: 00:49–03:00
• Hazardous fire conditions: 03:44–06:59
• Discussion on climate, lightning, healthy fire cycles: 06:13–09:02
• Firefighting technology and federal reorganization: 09:02–18:03
• Future outlook: 18:15

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Segment 2: Melissa Strong’s Survival and Climbing Comeback

Key Themes & Discussion Points

• Life-Altering Accident

  • Melissa Strong, a sponsored climber and restauranteur, was electrocuted performing fractal wood burning while preparing to open her new restaurant, Bird and Jim.
  • Hands severely burned; reconstructive surgery required.

• Physical and Emotional Recovery

  • Vivid account of the accident and aftermath:
    • “It was the most bizarre feeling that your whole body was completely beyond my control. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t shake my arm....When I realized I couldn’t even fall over, that’s when I just accepted that I was dying.” (00:35, 37:20)
    • Only survived because the house circuit breaker tripped after ~20 seconds. (38:18)
    • “Once I came to, that’s the first thing I glimpsed was...burnt bones sticking out of my hands.” (38:49)

• Reconstruction and Adaptation

  • Reconstruction reimagined her hands with skin from arms, groin, thigh:
    • “They’re a quilt of my own body. My thumbs came from my arms...my palms come from full-thickness skin grafts from my groin...some of my fingers came from partial-thickness skin grafts on my thigh.” (20:45)
    • “My hands were Frankenstein baseball mitts when I first saw them.” (23:06)
  • Used humor as key coping strategy:
    • “If you don’t laugh, then you are crying all the time.” (20:28)

• Return to Climbing and New Identity

  • Navigating bouldering with “nubs” instead of fingers: “Working in the restaurant industry...your days off...does not line up with other people. So this was a meditation, to some extent.” (25:02)
  • Regained independence and confidence: “It started awkwardly, and then it became more of a choreography.” (29:40)
  • On changing hands: “As far as climbing goes, the most missing fingers...is on the right hand...the accident transformed your left hand into your dominant hand.” (29:16, 29:29)

• The Psychology of Recovery

  • Wrestling with regret and self-forgiveness:
    • “There’s no one else to blame except me. And I knew right then and there that I also needed to forgive myself. And I needed to do it pretty darn quickly. Because...if I let that trickle into my life, it would just be a downward spiral of nothing but darkness and misery and zero recovery.” (42:28)
    • “I’ve never heard forgiveness as clearly put in relation to healing.” — Ryan Warner (43:14)
  • Reframing the accident site: “I threw myself down in the spot in the snow, and I made a snow angel.” (44:23)
  • On choosing to define the event by positivity: “Our brains are so powerful, you can paint it anyway...By defining it by the negative, that was really, was a choice.” (45:05–45:52)
  • Acceptance of her changed hands: “When I look at my hands now, I see my doctor’s masterpiece. To be perfectly honest, I feel as though... they’re, in a way, works of art.” (46:05)

• Reintegration and Meaning

  • The restaurant, Bird and Jim, incorporates her original fractal-burned table legs—a visible legacy of both trauma and community (47:11–48:04)
  • The persistent support of her partner and climbing community, and her ongoing journey in both literal and metaphorical climbing.

Notable Quotes

• “If you don’t laugh, then you are crying all the time.” — Melissa Strong (20:28)
• “I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t shake my arm...That’s when I just accepted that I was dying.” — Melissa Strong (00:35, 37:20)
• “When I look at my hands now, I see my doctor’s masterpiece...” — Melissa Strong (46:05)
• “I also needed to forgive myself...Because if I lived in that place of beating myself up...it would just be a downward spiral of nothing but darkness and misery and zero recovery.” — Melissa Strong (42:28)
• “It was a huge part. I mean, if you don’t laugh, then you are crying all the time.” (20:28)
• “Our brains are so powerful, you can paint it anyway...it was really, was a choice.” (45:05)

Memorable Moments

• Melissa describing the odd humor and body quilt of her reconstructed hands. (20:45–21:27)
• The snow angel at the accident site. (44:23)
• Her persistence and vulnerability while relearning to climb and inventing new movement solutions. (27:15–29:40)
• Honest discussion on regret, healing, and making meaning of trauma.

Important Timestamps

• Melissa Strong’s accident detailed: 33:13–39:25
• Recovery, self-forgiveness and acceptance: 41:40–45:52
• Return to climbing and adapting: 26:31–29:46, 25:07
• Restaurant and community: 47:11–48:04

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Conclusion

This episode of Colorado Matters underscores the interconnectedness of individual and collective resilience—facing the turbulence of Colorado’s 21st-century wildfires and bearing personal witness to trauma and healing. Whether through coordinated action against climate-fueled disaster, or solo perseverance to “climb through” adversity, the stories offer hard truths, hope, and a sense of shared journey.

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Want More?

• For further wildfire coverage, follow CPR News.
• Melissa Strong’s memoir: Climbing Through is available now.
• Visit Bird and Jim restaurant in Estes Park to see Melissa’s story in every table leg.

Transcript

[Ryan Warner]

A weekend of evacuations, firefighting and remembrance.

[Brian Fennessy]

This has been a difficult and heartbreaking time. The weight of this tragedy is felt far beyond our wildland fire community. Many people in this country have never met Sydney, Emily or Nick, but they feel that loss because they recognize the sacrifices they have made for our country.

[Ryan Warner]

Then to Rocky Mountain national park, where we climb with Melissa Strike. She's bouldering again after being electrocuted.

[Melissa Strong]

It was the most bizarre feeling that your whole body was completely beyond my control. I couldn't scream. I couldn't shake my arm. And then when I realized I couldn't even fall over, that's when I just accepted that I was dying.

[Ryan Warner]

Strong shares her survival story in the new book Climbing Through. This is Colorado Matters from CPR News and krcc. I'm Ryan Warner. Colorado's wildfire fight stretches from the wet mountains to the San Juans to the high country near Leadville. The Aspen Acres fire in southern Colorado is approaching 90,000 acres, but crews have their first major foothold on the fire with 12% containment this morning. For many evacuees, the wait continues with unanswered questions. Michael Kringlen lives near San Isabel with his dad, grandmother and two dogs. The family evacuates the day the fire started. Over the holiday weekend, he was in Pueblo volunteering to help other evacuees.

[Michael Kringlen]

Seeing the community come together to help each other who have been displaced and in need of help had me had me feeling like I need to do something to give back, too.

[Ryan Warner]

Nearby, folks had lunch together. Children played on a water slide.

[Michael Kringlen]

They're kids. They deserve to play and have fun. You know, they shouldn't have their summer and their Fourth of July ruined by something that is out of everyone's control.

[Ryan Warner]

Kringlen says he's preparing for the possibility that he and his family may not have a home to return to.

[Michael Kringlen]

The memories from the last seven years are not gone. They still live on through us. But all the little mementos and things that we looked at that reminded us of our time there will be gone. It means a lifetime of my dad's work is gone, too.

[Ryan Warner]

To the west, the Gold Mountain Fire near Ouray has burned more than 27,000 acres with virtually no containment. It has pushed into the encompagre wilderness with steep terrain and thick, dry conifers. More than 800 firefighters are assigned to that fire. Another burning outside Leadville, the Willow Fire, has grown to nearly 4,000 acres. Lake county ordered evacuation Sunday as these fires roared. Coloradans honored three wildland firefighters killed late last month Emily Barker, Nick Hutcherson and Sydney Watson were overcome by while battling the Snyder fire on the Utah Colorado border. At a memorial service Sunday in Grand Junction State, Fire Director Mike Morgan had a warning.

[Michael Kotis]

Keep your heads up. The conditions out there right now are extreme and fire behavior is unpredictable. Trust your training, trust each other, and come home safely.

[Ryan Warner]

Let's spend some time now with Michael Kodis. He's senior editor at Inside Climate News and author of Megafire the Race to Extinguish A Deadly Epidemic of Flame. Formerly, he led the center for Environmental Journalism at CU Boulder. And nice to see you again, Michael. I'm sorry it's under these conditions.

[Michael Kotis]

Me, too. But it's good to see you.

[Ryan Warner]

We are barely into July, and I'm wondering if this fire season feels different to you.

[Michael Kotis]

Well, there are a lot of ways in which this fire season stands out. We started this year looking at a very bad fire season just due to the incredibly paltry snowpack that we've got throughout the west and particularly here in Colorado. So that's allowed fuels to dry out to the point of being able to burn much earlier in the season than they usually do. But we've seen a lot of other weather anomalies that can play into this. We've seen a lot of unusual wind activity and unusually strong wind activity that's been driven by climate. And we're still seeing that during the current fires, which obviously makes firefighting very difficult and dangerous. When you've got very strong winds and they're very changeable, that means the fire can move in any direction very quickly in those dry fuels unexpectedly and threaten firefighters.

[Ryan Warner]

You know, I'm thinking of these little sprinkles, these short storms that I want to put some amount of hope in, but that don't necessarily seem to do much to change the picture.

[Michael Kotis]

You know, yeah, actually, this moisture that we're seeing, and even though we've had, you know, for a little bit, you know, maybe a month ago, we're seeing, you know, fairly consistent rains. They actually can be more of an addition to the threat than a reduction of the threat.

[Ryan Warner]

How so?

[Michael Kotis]

What we see is a lot of vegetation that can grow very quickly that's just been waiting for some moisture. So lots of grasses and scrubby vegetation that has been very dormant or not growing at all suddenly blooms up. When it gets a little bit of moisture, you get a big green up of what firefighters call one hour fuels. And the reason they're to them that way is because they basically can be dried back out to the point of Burning in about an hour when we return to drought, which is what we've seen. And so you see a big burst of these fine fuels and then suddenly they are ready to burn and really carry fire fast. And as you'll recall, the most destructive fire in Colorado history, the Marshall Fire, was largely driven by fine fuels like that, by grasses and fuels that can be dried out to point of combustion very, very quickly.

[Ryan Warner]

I also think about the fact that these storms carry with them lightning, which is of course a major trigger.

[Michael Kotis]

Yeah, lightning is really the only natural ignition source of wildfires. And we are not only seeing lots more, what we call dry lightning, where you see the thunderstorm come through and you're not really seeing much moisture out of it, but you're seeing a lot of lightning strikes. But as the climate has warmed, we're actually seeing and anticip an increase in the amount of lightning we're going to see because we're seeing more energy in the atmosphere. As more and more moisture gets sucked up into a warmer atmosphere, which is thirstier, then we have lots more potential for the kind of clouds that can drop lightning.

[Ryan Warner]

Well, that's fascinating. I don't think I'd heard that clear a connection between climate change and lightning. I'm mindful of the memorial that took place Sunday in Grand Junction, the lives lost. I'm mindful of those who have evacuated. But I do want to note that fires are a natural part of the natural world. Is the wildfire we're seeing also part of a healthy ecosystem? How should we be talking about this cycle?

[Michael Kotis]

Yeah, that's always a really good question. And in the fires that we're seeing right now, because they are unusually fast and intense and near human development, we end up focused on the hazard that they present, for sure. But wildfire is also a natural part of the cycle in most healthy forests and so many forests that we're seeing these really bad fires in, particularly when you get farther away from human development sometimes and into wilderness areas are actually very overgrown because we've been putting out so many fires for so long that we've allowed sometimes 10 or 20 times more vegetation to grow up in these forests and more trees. And so if you have that much more fuel, fires are going to behave differently. Fire in these areas functions something like nature's gardening crew. It goes through and removes dead timber and vegetation that has built up and would be available for a megafire, but can be burnt away by the frequent low intensity fires that just burn along the ground, like in spring and in fall and So a lot of the fire that we're seeing right now probably is healthy for a lot of these forests. Obviously, the focus that we've got right now is on the communities and the lives and the infrastructure that's at risk in areas where this fire is really unwelcome.

[Ryan Warner]

The governor likes to tout Colorado's own aerial firefighting fleet, which has been growing. There are federal air assets as well. What are the limitations to aircraft, especially as you talk about the winds we are seeing associated with this?

[Michael Kotis]

Yeah, wind is something that a lot of people don't take into consideration when they're hoping to see the cavalry arrive in the form of retardant dropping airplanes or helicopters that drop water. But wind makes those jobs not just very, very dangerous. And there aren't that many purpose built plan and helicopters that are designed to fight wildfires and be able to deal with winds like that. But you're also looking at a situation where a lot of the water or the fire retardant that would be dropped is going to be blown away before it hits the ground and before it hits its target. The other thing to bear in mind, particularly with fire retardant with the red stuff that we see coming out of planes is it's fire retardant. It's not fire extinguisher and so it's slowing the fire down. But you still have to get a crew on the ground into that area to do the work they would want to do to see to it that that stuff still doesn't burn. If they don't get in there quickly enough, then that retardant is going to dry up and those fuels are going to be available to burn. So it's not a cure all for us. When a fire retardant plane comes over and you see the red stuff dropping down, that by no means means that that area has been saved. It means that they've taken a step in that direction and that step gets much more difficult. And d as these winds pick up, we have stats that show that a firefighter's chance of dying on the job goes up about tenfold the moment they step into an aircraft.

[Ryan Warner]

Let's take a break. Continue this discussion shortly with Michael Kotis, senior editor at Inside Climate News and author of the book the Race to Extinguish A Deadly Epidemic of Flame. This is Colorado Matters from CPR News. It's Colorado Matters from CPR News. I'm Ryan Warner. There are wildfires burning throughout Colorado and any number of our neighbors are evacuated. At this point, we are speaking for Some context to Michael Kotis, senior editor at Inside Climate News, author of Megafire the Race to Extinguish A Deadly Epidemic of Flame. He formerly led the center for Environmental Journalism at CU Boulder. And Michael, we were speaking before the break about just the dangerous nature of this job, especially given the climate conditions. I want to focus on the three firefighters killed in the Snyder fire burning near the Utah Colorado border, two others recovering from injuries. We can dip back into the memorial Sunday. So this is Brian Fennessy, head of the new U.S. wildland Fire Service.

[Brian Fennessy]

This has been a difficult and heartbreaking time. The weight of this tragedy is felt far beyond our wildland fire commitment community. Many people in this country have never met Sydney, Emily, or Nick, but they feel that loss just the same because they recognize the sacrifices they have made for our country.

[Ryan Warner]

You've spent much of your career reporting on firefighter fatalities. What stands out to you about this particular incident?

[Michael Kotis]

Well, there's details from the actual situation that we probably won't know until there's a very thorough investigation completed. But they were brought in on a helicopter into a fairly remote fire that was fairly small, and that presents a lot of challenges to firefighters and a lot of threats and hazards to them. So when you go in a helicopter, you're not there, right. On a road. You don't have the potential to have fire trucks nearby. You're in a position where you're going to probably have to hike out of the fire. And so what firefighters call LCEs becomes really, really important. Those are the standing fire orders, and that acronym stands for lookout, communications, escape route and safety zone.

[Ryan Warner]

Okay.

[Michael Kotis]

And often it's very difficult when you're brought into a remote environment like that to have all of those things in place when you start to engage with this fire, particularly the escape route. Did they have a way of getting away from this fire quickly and getting to a place where they wouldn't get burned over and had they been to establish a safety zone where they've got no fuel, where the fire really can't get to them. And so those will be questions that we'll want to have answered. And then a kind of slightly bigger question to that is whether it was worth putting firefighters in this risky of a situation on a fairly remote fire that actually was burning near several other smaller fires that then merged into this giant Snyder fire. And the fact that you've got several fires like that burning, it's kind of like you're going in to fight one dragon, but you've got several other dragons around you, and you don't know what they're doing. And so it presents a really big hazard when you're bringing somebody into a remote environment like that.

[Ryan Warner]

So questions will emerge or have emerged around that call, making that call. The federal government is reorganizing, indeed, its capabilities into this new wildland fire service. I mean, I think we can't talk about this without acknowledging the changes in federal firefighting. Can you talk about how that may be presenting challenges?

[Michael Kotis]

Yeah. And to kind of take the aviation situation and build into a metaphor, we're really building an airplane to fight wildfires while we're flying it with this new agency. And by all accounts, Brian Fennessy, the new director of this wildland fire service in the Department of Interior, is an excellent choice to lead that. He, as opposed to a lot of other leaders in the current administration, has extensive experience on the ground fighting wildfires and in leadership of this. And what's happened under. What he's leading right now is all of the agencies that fight wildfire and the Department of Interior have been combined into a new U.S. wildland Fire Service. And that group, you know, is basically taking firefighters from the Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Park Service and putting them into one unit. And a lot of firefighters for many years have said, we really need something like this. We need a reorganization and a rethinking of how we fight wildfires, particularly given how much of a steep increase we're seeing in the amount of wildfire on the landscapes. But there's a real big rub in this, which is the fact that the biggest firefighting organization traditionally in the United States is in the U.S. forest Service. And the U.S. forest Service is part of the Department of Agriculture, not part of the Department of Interior. And so at this point, it's like, how do we coordinate the biggest firefighting agency with this new firefighting agency and have this leadership of our new national wildland fire agency, which is in the Department of Interior, be able to work well with the Forest Service, which used to be the still the dominant agency for the amount of resource and personnel and used to have the top leadership of our wildfire fight. So if you think in terms of the military, if we were to totally restructure how the Marines and the Navy and the army and the Air Force were all coordinated, and one of those big groups happened to kind of still be working with them and kind of be still disconnected from the others, you can imagine how complicated that gets. To bring it full circle back to the tragedy on the Utah border, the three firefighters that died, two of them worked for the new U.S. wildland Fire Service, and one still worked for the U.S. forest Service. And so it gives. And these agencies have always worked together fighting fire, you know, firefighters from the various departments and agencies. But in the reworking of all of this, there will be lots of questions of how were they corded? What were the communications like that put Forest Service workers and Wildland Fire Service workers into the same helicopter? Who was planning all of this out? How were these decisions made in this whole new structure that we've got for wildland firefighting?

[Ryan Warner]

Gosh, I appreciate that context, especially as the story evolves in just about the last minute. What are you looking out for in the months to come?

[Michael Kotis]

Well, we have a fire bloom explosion going on across the west. Colorado is kind of ground zero right now. And in the Southwest here, Arizona, New Mexico will have our eyes out for whether we get a good monsoon, which will make a very big difference in these fires. If we really start to get some rain and some storms, then that can help with the immediate picture. The longer term for many folks watching this is as we rethink how we deal with wildfire in the United States, are we going to be able to acknowledge how big a role climate change is playing in this and increasing these fires? Because there's a huge handicap that we've got right now, and that's been magnified by the fact that we have gotten rid of so much climate science out of the federal government and we have a lot of leaders who don't really believe in the science of climate change. That's going to make the job of the people on the ground fighting fires much more difficult.

[Ryan Warner]

Michael, thank you so much. Boulder journalist Michael Kotis of Inside Climate News, also the author of Megafire. I'm Ryan Warner. You're with CPR News and krcc. You're back with Colorado Matters. From CPR News and krcc, I'm Ryan Warner. Climber Melissa Strong was on her way up. She had sponsors in her sport. She was a budding restaurateur. As she rushed to Open Bird and Jim in Estes park, she grabbed a tool that was live with 2000 volts of electricity. She thought she was going to die. Then the breaker tripped. Her hands would have to be reconstructed. Strong shares her survival story in the new book Climbing. We met in Rocky Mountain National Park.

[Melissa Strong]

Before climbing, I have to tape my nubs.

[Ryan Warner]

Your nubs. Now, do you consider them fingers or is that just a little tongue in cheek humor?

[Melissa Strong]

There once were fingers and now they're nubs and they were nubs formerly known as fingers.

[Michael Kringlen]

Sorry.

[Ryan Warner]

How much was laughter important to getting you through this?

[Melissa Strong]

It was a huge part. I mean, if you don't laugh, then you are crying all the time as

[Ryan Warner]

you wrap up your nubs. To use your own words, as I do, remind me what various parts of your body your hands now represent.

[Melissa Strong]

They're a quilt of my own body. My thumbs came from my arms, my forearms. You can see these really cool scars I have.

[Ryan Warner]

Yeah.

[Melissa Strong]

So they sewed my thumbs into my opposing forearms to try to save the thumbs as much as they could and also introduce the large amounts of skin to their. What would be their new home. The skin from my arms are now around what are my new thumbs, and my palms come from full thickness skin grafts from my groin, is what the doctors like to say. I basically say bikini line. And some of my fingers came from a partial thickness skin graft on my thigh.

[Ryan Warner]

The thumbs meant that for three weeks, you were in what you refer to as an I Dream of Genie pose,

[Melissa Strong]

where I have skin grafts. Now, you literally could see burnt bones that were exposed. So to introduce those bones to blood flow, that was one of the main reasons. And then the other reason was to create and introduce what would soon be skin moved from my arms to my thumbs, to introduce it to the new areas, to equate those exactly. So they could get to know each other and work well together.

[Ryan Warner]

Yes. These disparate parts of your body.

[Melissa Strong]

Yes.

[Ryan Warner]

Now, you began with a little humor in this process, referring to it as I Dream of Jeannie, but eventually this began to feel a bit like a straight jacket.

[Melissa Strong]

Exactly. I mean, I think I used I Dream of Jeannie just to mentally coach myself into this horror film. You know, like, let's polish this turd a little and let's put something nice on it. My doctor initially said that I would be sewn like this for one to two weeks. And then once we started going over that mark, that's when I felt like it kind of turned into the straight jacket pose.

[Michael Kotis]

Yeah.

[Ryan Warner]

You were stuck in this pose.

[Melissa Strong]

Definitely stuck.

[Ryan Warner]

An imposed pose.

[Melissa Strong]

Very imposed. I feared. I'm a really vivid dreamer and I feared about even waking up and trying to tug my arms apart.

[Ryan Warner]

And in your book, climbing through, you also invoke Frankenstein. You know that there were times you felt like Frankenstein's monster.

[Melissa Strong]

Yeah, for sure. I mean, having all those parts of your body cut and moved and then sewn to another part. I think I called my hands Frankenstein baseball mitts. When I First saw them.

[Ryan Warner]

You wanted the picture of your hands to be more prominent on your book coverage. I understand.

[Melissa Strong]

I did. I did. Because, I mean, for a lot of reasons, but the book isn't really about climbing. Yeah, but the publisher wanted a climbing picture on the front. I felt like not everyone is into climbing. Not everyone knows about climbing. You know, you're walking through the bookstore, you see a girl climbing. You're like, oh, good for her. And you just move on. Like, you don't understand really what the story is about with the COVID So I did want a picture of. Of my hands on the front, because that's the story.

[Ryan Warner]

You now have your nubs taped. You have chalk on your hands. Melissa, I love that you touched your nose and it looks like you've been doing cocaine. But that's not the case.

[Melissa Strong]

Not the case.

[Ryan Warner]

Okay, I'm just checking.

[Melissa Strong]

Climbing chalk everywhere.

[Ryan Warner]

So tell us where you've brought us and what we're doing today.

[Melissa Strong]

Well, I brought you to Boxcar Boulder in Weill Basin.

[Michael Kringlen]

In.

[Melissa Strong]

This boulder is so special because I kind of learned how to climb here. You know, it was one of the places that I could. As you can see, you don't top out these problems because this boulder is colossal. So I could.

[Ryan Warner]

It's towering above us, and you'd be hard pressed to get to the top on this side simply because there's a roof. A roof.

[Melissa Strong]

A huge roof.

[Ryan Warner]

A huge roof.

[Melissa Strong]

Yep. Coming out over the top. But yes, you don't top it out. And so it's one of the things.

[Michael Kringlen]

Things.

[Melissa Strong]

I could come here alone. The parking lot's not far away. I could take a couple trips. I could get my crash pads all lined up and I could just have a session by myself. Working in the restaurant industry, a lot of times your days off and your time off does not line up with other people.

[Ryan Warner]

With the rest of the world.

[Melissa Strong]

Yeah, exactly. You're not weekend warriors.

[Ryan Warner]

So this was a meditation to some extent.

[Melissa Strong]

Oh, totally. You know, the trees, the sounds, the beauty of it. Having time alone to figure out the puzzle. And that's what I loved about bouldering. I started off rope climbing, but bouldering won me over because it really is a puzzle and it's different for everyone. And you kind of have your own journey with each boulder problem.

[Ryan Warner]

Wow, this feels like a metaphor, frankly. For your book and for your journey. Climbing through. You were a sponsored climb before the accident. Yes, yes. Which meant you were good enough that somebody wanted to give you free stuff.

[Melissa Strong]

Exactly.

[Michael Kotis]

Yeah.

[Melissa Strong]

Yeah. It wasn't a living. I had to work for a living still. But it was free crash pads from organic, free clothing from Prana. Prana even gave me some cash to go on road trips and free chalk from Friction Labs. Chalk, which is what I'm putting on my hands right now.

[Ryan Warner]

Are you still sponsored?

[Melissa Strong]

Yeah, they still send me free or discounted items even though I'm old and don't have all my fingers.

[Ryan Warner]

Come now, Come now. Let's pick this story up, including the day of the injury and your path to today and sitting with us. But I'd like to just watch you climb and if you do me a favor and maybe talk out what's going on in your head.

[Melissa Strong]

Okay, I will do my best to do that.

[Ryan Warner]

Yeah. And if you might maybe describe the experience and what you notice before and after the accident, maybe the new things that you negotiate with nubs instead of fully fledged fingers. Does that sound good?

[Melissa Strong]

It sounds good. Adam.

[Ryan Warner]

Adam is your husband. You met him climbing?

[Melissa Strong]

We met climbing in Rocky Mountain National Park.

[Ryan Warner]

Adam is helping you set up your crash pads.

[Melissa Strong]

Yep.

[Ryan Warner]

He's prominent in the book.

[Melissa Strong]

Yes, he is.

[Ryan Warner]

Yes.

[Melissa Strong]

Thankfully, I'm lucky enough to have a good partner that stayed with me and helped me climb through. Okay. So one thing that's really special about this boulder problem in particular, and you're

[Ryan Warner]

going to traverse that is rather than going up, you're going up.

[Melissa Strong]

I'm going to go across. Yep. Across this rock seam. When I decided to return to climb, the journey was really long. It was extremely painful. It started at home on our climbing while on plastic holds. But I wanted to climb outside because that's what I love. Like, I. I just love this setting. I love touching the rock.

[Ryan Warner]

Was it healing too well?

[Melissa Strong]

It wasn't. He. It was eventually mentally healing that I could do this.

[Ryan Warner]

Yes.

[Melissa Strong]

Initially it was very mentally challenging and

[Ryan Warner]

it extremely painful because it was not just the puzzle of the rock, but the puzzle of your body.

[Melissa Strong]

Exactly.

[Ryan Warner]

And painful.

[Melissa Strong]

And painful because you're missing fingers. I lost reach. I lost index of how far I can reach. Your body is giving you warning signals telling you not to do what you desperately want to do. So it's this mind body battle that I initially went through. And then it went was learning how to be comfortable while you're uncomfortable. So this is the first outside boulder problem that I did after the accident. So it was.

[Ryan Warner]

You're going to recreate this for us, Melissa.

[Melissa Strong]

It was one week shy of a year.

[Ryan Warner]

A year after the accident.

[Melissa Strong]

Yep.

[Ryan Warner]

Okay.

[Melissa Strong]

And here I go. I'm going to pull onto this gigantic jug at the start. And my spotter is in place because I can fall at any time.

[Ryan Warner]

Adam is there. He's got your back, almost literally.

[Melissa Strong]

So what happens is this middle missing finger kind of can't stay on the rock, and it drops off in some points. And that's how I kind of found that it works for me.

[Ryan Warner]

Say more about the middle missing finger.

[Melissa Strong]

So it's the weakest link, to be honest. As I continue to climb and try to talk,

[Ryan Warner]

we're adding another piece to the puzzle. Sorry about that, Melissa.

[Melissa Strong]

It's okay. It makes the right hand, which used to be my dominant hand. It makes it the weaker hand.

[Ryan Warner]

So you said used to be. That is the accident transformed your left hand into your dominant hand.

[Melissa Strong]

It did.

[Ryan Warner]

My goodness.

[Brian Fennessy]

All right.

[Melissa Strong]

And I'm at the end of the traverse just to be well done. And so I got to dance again instead of awkwardly move.

[Ryan Warner]

So it started awkwardly, and then it became more of a choreography.

[Melissa Strong]

Exactly.

[Ryan Warner]

Yeah.

[Melissa Strong]

100%.

[Ryan Warner]

I remember in your book, one of the first things you ask your doctor is at Anschutz. So immediately after the accident, you go to Greeley. Their level of care simply could not meet your level, level of need. And you go to Anschutz, you go to the university, and one of the first questions you ask is, am I going to be able to climb again?

[Melissa Strong]

It was a hard question, and I knew kind of how ridiculous it was as it came out of my mouth. And I knew no one could answer that, to be honest, but it was still something that I had to say.

[Ryan Warner]

And yet there was a provider in your entourage of cat hair who had some experience climbing and understood the question to some extent.

[Melissa Strong]

Yes. And I kind of could peg him as a climber. I don't know why. Just how he carried himself is. He was wearing an arteryx coat. And I felt like if there was going to ask anyone, I should ask the guy who looked like a climber. And it turned out that he. He was a rock climber. He had climbed up to medical school, and, not surprising, I guess, stopped after being a hand surgeon. He wanted to protect his future of his hands. But we still keep in touch today

[Ryan Warner]

as you talked about your dominant hand, your new dominant hand, I'm thinking of the first time you wrote with your new hands. Was that with the left hand?

[Melissa Strong]

It was. With the right hand.

[Ryan Warner]

It was, yeah.

[Melissa Strong]

So I haven't retrained everything.

[Ryan Warner]

Oh, so you still.

[Melissa Strong]

I still write. I still pretty much grab and reach out, you know, for a water bottle or a fork or anything with my Right hand. It's just as far as climbing goes. The most missing fingers, I guess, is on the right hand.

[Ryan Warner]

What did you write? Do you remember?

[Melissa Strong]

I can't remember exactly, but I wrote. And it's funny because I've only read what I wrote a million times. I think I wrote that my name is Melissa Strong and these are the first words I'm writing with my new hands. And hopefully one day I will climb again, but I will probably cry a lot along the way.

[Ryan Warner]

You already answered the question. You did cry a lot.

[Melissa Strong]

Yeah, I did. I did.

[Ryan Warner]

It's so cathartic. It's exhausting and cathartic to cry both.

[Melissa Strong]

Yeah, for sure. You've got to let it out, you know, you can only be so strong. You can only climb through so much. You've got to. You've got to have those moments where you give yourself that time to grieve.

[Ryan Warner]

Will you sit on a crash pad and just make it a chat pad and finish our conversation?

[Melissa Strong]

Yeah, of course. I'd be happy to. Great.

[Ryan Warner]

Take a load off.

[Melissa Strong]

Okay.

[Ryan Warner]

Indeed. More with Estes park climber and restaurateur Melissa Strong. After a break. Her new book is Climbing Through. Still to Come the Day of the Electrocution and How Forgiving Herself Helped Her Heal. This is Colorado Matters from CPR News. You're with Colorado Matters from CPR News. I'm Ryan Warner. Literal and metaphorical climbing. Today, let's return to Rocky Mountain national park where I met Boulderer and restaurateur Melissa Strong. Her new book is Climbing Through. A note that this part of the conversation contains vivid details of her accident. I didn't want to start with the day of the accident. It just felt a little fast having just met you. Can we talk about it now?

[Melissa Strong]

For sure.

[Ryan Warner]

Okay. You mentioned that climbing while being sponsored was not a full time gig, was not a way to make a living. And so you've had a history in hospitality. You were getting ready to open Burden Gym, the restaurant in at park, the reference to a lady's life in the Rocky Mountains. If people have read that book, Bird and Jim and the day of the electrocution, you were essentially engaged in a design project.

[Melissa Strong]

Yes. The dollar signs were stacking up. I didn't have a loan, so I was trying to figure out how I could save some money. And the old restaurant came with these pine tables. I didn't necessarily want that pine wood cabin look, so I took some of the tables home and I was trying to figure out how the design would work and just trying to Come up with an idea. My husband found the Lichtenberg technique on the Internet. Of course, you can find anything on the Internet. Fractal burning, basically. So you just hook up electricity to wood, and it creates these really cool patterns on wood, almost like a river's, like on a map.

[Ryan Warner]

But you need water.

[Melissa Strong]

Well, you paint baking soda and water onto the wood first to help conduct the electricity.

[Ryan Warner]

Yes.

[Melissa Strong]

I asked him. I'm like, wow, that looks really cool. Will you please make me that machine? And he said, sure, I can. You just need an old microwave. And we had plenty of old microwaves from the old restaurant shoved in a shipping container that we were going to get rid of one day. So I brought my treasure. Home of a microwave that I would never use in my restaurant, because we'll never have microwaves in there.

[Michael Kringlen]

There.

[Melissa Strong]

He took out the transformer, hooked it up to kind of these little cables, like mini clamps on the ends of the cables. Look like mini jumper cables, and then a plug to plug it into the wall. And this is extremely dangerous. And Adam knew that, and he felt as though a way for me to not hurt myself was by not putting an on off switch. Because then you're like, whoa, is on up, is on down, is off up.

[Ryan Warner]

And so, yeah, the idea of being, if it's unplugged, it's off. If it's plugged in, it's on.

[Melissa Strong]

Exactly. And he thought, I could never screw that up. And so he demonstrated how to use the machine and stood with me as I tried it the first handful of times. I did make the mistake, obviously. And what I was doing this day is I decided to do these burns outside for the first time. So I had opened up the big garage doors. I moved the table outside. I brought the machine outside. I uncoiled the extension cord to make sure the length would fit, and I plugged it into the machine, and at that point, it didn't spark. Every time I plugged the machine into the wall, it always made this little spark.

[Ryan Warner]

So you didn't get the indication it was plugged in.

[Melissa Strong]

Yeah. I think part of me in my mind thought that, oh, the extension cord isn't plugged into the wall, and. Or whatever's not working is not working right now. Now. And I immediately just thought, no big deal, and then dropped the cords, walked away and went back into the house to get the baking soda and water and came back out, and then picked up the leads. And sure enough, the cord was plugged in, and the machine was live. And now I was. I was Getting the electricity coursing through me.

[Ryan Warner]

Reading your account of this, I was, I think, most taken aback by the fact that as you're being electrocuted, the inclination to drop something that's in your hands is overridden by the convulsive nature of the experience. One and two, you are in a way prevented by the electricity from screaming for help. These were two observations you made that have really stuck with me.

[Melissa Strong]

It's bizarre. You know, you're just frozen and, you know, I understand, you know, if you're injured or you're hurt or something happens, and sometimes you're. You're unable to do something physically. But it was the most bizarre feeling that your whole body, everything in your body was completely beyond my control. I couldn't scream, I couldn't shake my arm. I couldn't even fall over. I thought maybe I could just fall

[Ryan Warner]

over and knock the tools out of your hands.

[Melissa Strong]

That's what I was hoping for. And then when I realized I couldn't even fall over, that's when I just accepted that I was dying.

[Ryan Warner]

You really thought that that was going to be your end?

[Melissa Strong]

I had no way out.

[Ryan Warner]

How long was current going through your body?

[Melissa Strong]

I always estimate it was about 20 seconds. And it's funny because I say that and that's what I've said from the beginning. And then I met an electrician who asked me that same question, and I told him, and he said it's probably right because that's how long it takes to trip a breaker.

[Ryan Warner]

Oh, is that what ended it?

[Melissa Strong]

That's what saved me. That's the only thing. That's the only reason why I'm talking to you today is I surged the power on the house and the breaker tripped.

[Ryan Warner]

You would need a lot of fortitude in the months that followed.

[Melissa Strong]

Definitely.

[Ryan Warner]

How much did the at least I'm still alive thought carry you through?

[Melissa Strong]

Honestly, it carried me through all the way until today. It's a huge piece. When you see that you're dying and that your bones.

[Ryan Warner]

This just stood out to me. That your bones are burned. Yeah, your bones were burned.

[Melissa Strong]

I could see them. Once I came to, that's the first thing I glimpsed was like how wherever you don't see fingers, you could see burnt bones sticking out of my hands. But the gratitude of not dying, of being alive, of being able to come back, I can't say it overrode everything, and everything was great. Of course not. It was still hard and challenging and full of tears and anger and frustration, but I was still grateful. That I got a chance to try at life again.

[Michael Kotis]

Yeah.

[Ryan Warner]

The through part of climbing through is the survival is the getting through is the coping. And I think at one point you then encounter what you call the miracle that the doctors are able to work with your hands. And your surgeon corrects you and says, it's not gonna be a miracle, it'll be medical science.

[Melissa Strong]

It's science. Yep. Yeah. And it was.

[Ryan Warner]

But isn't it a little bit of both?

[Melissa Strong]

I think it's a little bit of both. I think the fact that I. I didn't die, the fact that I broke the, you know, the breaker, tripped and I even got the chance to try. I think that's the miracle part. And then he came in with a science bit.

[Ryan Warner]

I looked up the method that you were using to do the wood carving. What is it called again?

[Melissa Strong]

Lichtenberg technique. Fractal burning.

[Ryan Warner]

And when you Google it, you immediately get a warning about how dangerous it is. And there's this group called the American Wood Turner's Association. They actually. This was part of the AI summary. They actually have prohibited the promotion of this way of doing things. And when I thought about it, I wondered if it tells us something about your relationship to risk and your willingness to expose yourself to risk. Because inherent in climbing is the idea that you could do something that would, you know, end in you meeting your demise.

[Melissa Strong]

So I started rope climbing and then I moved into bouldering.

[Ryan Warner]

Yeah.

[Melissa Strong]

Your odds are way less dying on this.

[Ryan Warner]

I think maybe that's why I do it.

[Melissa Strong]

Yeah.

[Ryan Warner]

As opposed to the rope stuff for sure. Yeah.

[Melissa Strong]

And honestly, I'm kind of like a highway to the safety zone type of girl and always have been. So I can't say I am a big risk taker. You know, I'm not gonna pre solo anything. I'm not gonna.

[Ryan Warner]

You're not the kind of adrenaline junkie I meet so often in Colorado.

[Melissa Strong]

No, no, no. I just. For some reason, I just love climbing.

[Ryan Warner]

Yeah.

[Melissa Strong]

But I don't like the risk. In fact, I'm super afraid of heights. You'll never find me on the side of a building.

[Ryan Warner]

So what's your relationship to regret? Like, when you think about that day,

[Melissa Strong]

it's an interesting one.

[Ryan Warner]

I think the reason I asked this, by the way, Melissa, is not to be accusatory. It actually comes from a self reflection place, which is. I'm really hard on myself.

[Melissa Strong]

Oh, yeah.

[Ryan Warner]

And if I make a mistake, I torture myself with it for a long time. And I'm curious how if you do that.

[Melissa Strong]

Oh, I'm that type of person, you know, even if I. I said something that didn't come out the way I meant it, or maybe I. I snapped, I'll go to bed at night, and I'm like, oh, my God, I can't believe I said that to that person. Oh, my God, I feel so bad. I. Maybe I should call them tomorrow and try to let them know I was hangry or whatever, you know, churning. It wasn't them. Yeah. So I get stuck on things and I can beat myself up for not being perfect, or at least as good of a person as I could be.

[Ryan Warner]

How did that apply to the accident?

[Melissa Strong]

It was huge, of course, because now I'm laying in a hospital with bones visibly sticking out of my hands that are burnt, looking at my husband, who's looking back at me with love and terror, and I'm looking at him with love and terror. And it's just like, I did this to myself. There's no one else to blame except me. And I knew right then and there that I also needed to forgive myself. And I needed to do it pretty darn quickly. Because if I lived in that place of beating myself up for saying the wrong thing, you know, if I let that trickle into my life, that it would just be a downward spiral of nothing but darkness and misery and zero recovery, you know, how can your body heal when you won't let yourself even mentally, take the first step forward?

[Michael Kringlen]

Whoa.

[Ryan Warner]

I've never heard forgiveness as clearly put in relation to healing.

[Melissa Strong]

It was a huge part of it.

[Ryan Warner]

That is my head exploding, by the way. How was it to write that scene

[Melissa Strong]

and relive it with the electricity? It was extremely challenging. I wrote it the first time for a writer's clinic that Adidas sent me to for Rock and I. And I can say that I probably wrote that chapter too many times, but I wrote it over and over again because I had to. I had to get it right. And even when I wrote it for Rockin Ice, it wasn't necessarily the way I wanted it to read. It reads different in the book. And it was very difficult. It was very challenging. You know, sometimes I would just have to stop writing and just take a breather and walk around. And one evening I did that, and I walked outside, and that's where the accident happened. And I'm like, oh, my God. I'm trying to get away from these thoughts. And here I am now, standing four feet away from where this all happened.

[Ryan Warner]

You were at your house?

[Melissa Strong]

Yeah, I was at the house. And so what I did right then was I threw myself down in the spot in the snow, and I made a snow angel angel.

[Michael Kringlen]

Oh,

[Ryan Warner]

you reassigned it.

[Melissa Strong]

To some extent, I did. And people would ask me, you know, when I was getting ready to leave the hospital, because it was 38 days in the hospital. I hadn't been back to my house since this accident happened. And they're like, oh, are you so afraid to go home after? Because that's where it happened. I'm like, no, my house saved me. Literally, my house saved me.

[Ryan Warner]

By tripping.

[Melissa Strong]

By tripping, yeah.

[Ryan Warner]

Your house, how saved you?

[Melissa Strong]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Ryan Warner]

I wondered what your relationship was to the spot. The snow angel detail. My goodness.

[Melissa Strong]

Our brains are so powerful, you can paint it anyway. If I wanted to hold on to the negative part and let that negative bit define me, I could have.

[Ryan Warner]

But inherent in that is choice. Yes, there is. And I have to remind myself of this. There is inherent choice in how we handle or react to things.

[Melissa Strong]

Yes. And how we think and where we let our brains go. You know, we ultimately are in charge of our thoughts, nobody else. And if we wanted to, you know, yeah, you can let that negative scenario spin, but you're not doing yourself a service. You're not doing your life. As I put in the book, I wasn't doing my life lived up to that point a service by defining it by the negative. And so it was really, was a choice.

[Ryan Warner]

I asked you to talk about the various body parts that now make up your hands, your nubs. What do you see when you look at your hands?

[Melissa Strong]

I wish I could remember what my hands used to look like. I don't anymore.

[Ryan Warner]

Oh, but there must be old photographs.

[Melissa Strong]

There's tons of old photos. And I see it, and I'm like, oh, God, my hands were so beautiful. Not something you think of when you think of people's hands. In fact, like, just talking to you or, you know, anyone. I look at people's hands all the time now. I find thumbs fascinating and beautiful. But when I look at my hands now, I. I see my doctor's masterpiece. To be perfectly honest, I feel as though this is. They're, in a way, works of art. I still sometimes see loss, since I still am frustrated at points. You know, it's not something I choose to let take over, but there is still frustration, you know, oh, I can't button this button. I can't put this necklace on. You're in a hurry, and you're trying to do the last little things before you leave the house. And you start fumbling and dropping everything. And so there's still like when I look at them, I see both. I see beauty, I see what I have. And I can also see what I'm missing.

[Ryan Warner]

If I walk into Burden Jim today, is the fractal art there on the tables?

[Melissa Strong]

Yes. Yes. It's on all of the table legs.

[Ryan Warner]

Is the one that you were doing in there?

[Melissa Strong]

Yes, the ones that I completed, the one that I was working on, they're still in the restaurant. I didn't finish them, though. But all the legs have the burning technique done to them because when I was in the hospital, a local artist wrote me and said that he had a safe way of doing this and he offered to finish making the designs on the table legs. And I said, that's fantastic because no one would ever let me try that again. And my husband laughed and he said I would for sure because you'd never make that same mistake again. And I was like, well, as usual, you're right.

[Ryan Warner]

Amazing. Thank you so much for, well, climbing. Originally, I was gonna climb with you, but I'm glad not to have and just watched. But thanks also for chatting with me.

[Melissa Strong]

Anytime you want to come out climbing, you just let me know.

[Ryan Warner]

Climber and restaurateur Melissa Strong, who owns Bird and Gym in Estes Park. Her new book is Climbing through, about surviving Electrocute. Thanks for spending time with us. And thanks to the Colorado Matters team.

[Brian Fennessy]

Tyler Bender, Carl Bielek, Anthony Cotton, Pete

[Melissa Strong]

Kramer, Andrea Dukakis, Zan Huckpechone, Matt Herz,

[Ryan Warner]

Tom House, Pedro Lumbragno, Shane Rumsey, Haley Sanchez, Chandra Thomas Whitfield, and I'm Ryan Warner. Now, London produced our climbing Conversation session. This is CPR News and krcc.