A decade ago, Charles Costa was skiing on a holiday with his brother in the Arlberg region of the Austrian Alps when he approached a pair of enormous jumps.
Costa was inexperienced, but also brimmed with that sense of invincibility and untested confidence so often found in 20-somethings.
He cleared the first jump. The second?
“I just wiping out on a monumental scale,” Costa said. “I landed on my head. A helicopter landed on the slope and took me to the emergency room. The damage was on the frontal parts of my brain, which was bruised and swollen.
“The doctors put me in an induced coma. It was a jumbled-salad cocktail, the healing.”
Unseen intersections in life can redirect the path and shape the future. For Costa, an accomplished musician and songwriter from London, it began a personal wrestling match with mental health and a desire to channel that into something meaningful.
Ten years later, that led him to tackle the unthinkable: Run, hike and shuffle one foot in front of the other in any way possible to cover the equivalent of 90 marathons in 90 days on the unforgiving Pacific Crest Trail.
Costa dodged wildfires, run-ins with wildlife and a hospital visit brought on by the searing heat of the high desert south of the Eastern Sierra.
He finished Wednesday at the trail’s southern terminus south of Campo.
The run raised money for The Jed Foundation and James’ Place, two charities that combat mental health and suicide.
“I kissed the terminus, full-on,” said Costa, 39. “My brother and some friends came to meet me. They had some champagne. I had a very cold beer. Lovely time.”
Some unpredictable, frightening times led to the stirring moment.
The ski injury impacted the part of the brain that deals with emotions and inhibitions.
When doctors first brought Costa back to consciousness, he said he was in a “kind of a straight jacket.” He was told that was standard for coming out of sedation like that when a patient was confused and upset.
“I looking around the room, semi-groggy, coming to the conclusion I was dead,” Costa recalled. “Where I was certainly was not heaven, so I thought I was in hell and lost it. While I was in the hospital bed, I was terrified of everything.
“You notice the physical recovery. My balance was off. I lost all my rhythm. I would sit behind the drum kit and couldn’t play. Then there was a more subtle, lasting anxiety and depression. It’s the kind of recovering I’ve been trying to get my head around for years.
“I’ve been on anti-depression and anxiety meds to keep it at bay. When I come off them, I go right back to where I was in that hospital bed.”
Costa dove into ultra-running, tracing a route from the northern end of Scotland to the southern tip of England. He ran mountain races in Switzerland. He began to fixate on other challenges.
The thought of the extreme challenges along the Pacific Crest Trail took root in his mind and never let go.
“The PCT was one of the trails that stood out as phenomenal and magnificent,” he said.
As Costa began to untangle things in his life, he noticed connections between his musical and running worlds.
“It’s not obvious, but what drove me to singing and songwriting and (this) is similar,” he said. “How much therapy it is for mental entanglements and trauma. You don’t need instruments. Your body becomes the instrument to express your feelings. You can take out your feelings on the mountain or the road or the track. You can pour that energy into it and release it.
“I find that with singing, you’re turning your body into an instrument in the same way.”
The PCT reinforced it all.
“It was all a massive set of mountain ranges, going from peak to peak, valley to valley, and it never ends,” Costa said. “The wildlife was incredible. The bears, the coyotes, the eagles and owls. Snakes, running into massive spider webs in the middle of the night.
“The scariest thing was a massive porcupine in Washington. I had this old wives’ tale that they shoot their quills at you and I’d be covered in porcupine quills.
“But there’s a beautiful community of people who do it.”
What’s next?
Costa, who previously recorded under the name King Charles, is preparing to release a new album.
In 2009, he won an international songwriting competition judged by Tom Waits, Jeff Beck, Loretta Lynn and Jerry Lee Lewis for the song “Love Lust.”
Wait, King Charles? That rings a bell.
“Yeah, he’s quite the competition,” Costa said of the United Kingdom’s ruling monarch, with a laugh. “I did feel a little bit like the second fiddle in the orchestra when he became king. I should have seen it coming.”
In life, it’s often about the things you don’t see coming.
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90 Marathons, 90 Days
British singer and songwriter Charles Costa ran and hiked the equivalent of 90 marathons in 90 days along the Pacific Crest Trail to raise money for mental health initiatives.
To help, visit his GoFundMe page.
