Reaching New Heights in Recovery – Climb 2 Recovery: Redefining What Recovery Means for Wounded Veterans
Service in the armed forces can demand everything – your body, your mind, your identity. For those with life-altering injuries, illness or trauma, the end of service is not the end of the battle. It marks the beginning of a long and complex recovery often defined by loss of purpose, disconnection, and invisible wounds that never made the headlines.
Climb 2 Recovery (C2R) exists to change that narrative.
Founded by and for veterans, it’s a bold reimagining of what recovery can look like – not just clinical treatment or care, but reconnection, long-term engagement, and meaning. Through therapeutic mountaineering and climbing, the project creates powerful experiences and a community that reignites hope, rebuilds trust, and fosters long-term transformation. Veterans often go from complete beginners to qualified leaders, supported by monthly residential courses that offer consistency, challenge, and deep peer connection, far into the future.
This isn’t just adventure therapy. It’s a structured, trauma-informed programme grounded in the latest research and neuroscience – and it works.
More than a boost – A lifeline
In 2024, 100% of participants felt safe, supported, and made new friends. During courses, 93% reported improvements in mental health, mood, and outlook — with 64% describing these improvements as very significant. Weeks and months later, 89% still reported sustained positive change, and 53% said their mental health had remained greatly improved.
This isn’t a temporary boost – it’s a lifeline. Many members, and Psychologist Dr Lucy Sheen-Harker, who conducted doctoral research on Climb 2 Recovery, describe the programme as both “life-saving and life-changing.” Veterans living with PTSD, amputation, illness, and depression have found strength, community, and purpose again.
Climb 2 Recovery challenges the idea that recovery is something done to people. It’s built on doing recovery with them – co-creating a future that goes beyond survival. With the right environment, veterans don’t just heal. They lead. They serve again. And they thrive.
Understanding a language of survival and resilience
This is a bold reimagining of what recovery can be, based on the research, the science, and the lived experience of hundreds of Climb 2 Recovery members. They call it ’therapeutic without the therapy’.
As some of their members explain:
‘”Being part of a community through Climb to Recovery has been crucial for my mental health. There is an unspoken understanding between us—a shared language of survival and resilience. I’ve formed bonds with others who know what it’s like to feel broken and still choose to show up. The mountains and the Rock have become a meeting place between pain and progress, between who I was and who I’m becoming.'”
“Engaging with C2R has had an unbelievable effect on my life, which I am so grateful for. As a veteran who has had the unfortunate experience of making attempts on my own life, I only wish I had the strength to engage much earlier than I did but hopefully through my continuing engagement I can one day be in a position to help others face that same dilemma. Thank you so much for helping me start building a life a don’t want to lose never mind end prematurely.”
“In every aspect it is an incredible enterprise. The community, the honesty, the support, the challenge, the progression, the access to nature. It is so powerful and so badly needed.”
“C2R continues to be a lifeline while I navigate significant psychological and physical injuries prior to medical discharge. Moreover, it provides a community and camaraderie with like minded people all navigating their own equally complex journeys. The opportunity to be a part of the safe and supportive C2R community is amazing.”
“This course was a game changer in my life! It’s made me want to take up the sport and progress, my instructor was awesome and did everything at a pace that suited our group. I loved the banter as well as feeling very safe. Already booked to return! Made friends and had lots of laughs, an amazing week!”
“This is the 3rd time I’ve been involved with C2R, and it was the best one yet! I can’t wait for the next course. It gives me something to look forward to. I feel more confident each time I attend. The difference in my head space between the first course and this is night and day for me!”
“C2R is unique within the military charity sector. They make a promise to be there throughout your journey. They create friendships, trust and loyalty to each other. It’s hard to put into words just how important it is.”
Find out more
Watch the Climb 2 Recovery video here
Check out more projects we’ve supported under the Armed Forces Covenant Fund