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To
Climb Every Mountain: The Blind Climber Planning to
Stand on Top of the World
by
Erik Weihenmayer
Reprinted from the Braille Monitor
From
the Editor: On Monday afternoon, July 5, a remarkable
young man addressed the 1999 convention of the National
Federation of the Blind. His name was Erik Weihenmayer,
and with the help of the NFB he was making plans to
climb Mt. Everest in the spring of 2001 as part of a
team of world-class climbers. This is what he said:
In
1996 my friends and I climbed a rock face, actually
the tallest exposed granite monolith in the world, called
El Capitan. It's 3,300 feet of overhanging rock in Yosemite
Valley in California. The scariest part of the climb
was actually sleeping on the ledges. They were maybe
a foot-and-a-half wide, and even though you'd lash yourself
to the side of the rock face, you'd still roll over
in the night, and, with half your body hanging off a
thousand-foot cliff, you wouldn't sleep very well. Since
I knew I wasn't going to sleep very much, I decided
to entertain myself. I had brought a box of Tic Tacs
up the mountain with me, and my friend Jeff had made
the mistake of falling asleep on a ledge maybe ten feet
below us with his mouth open. So my friend Sam actually
got a beam on Jeff's open mouth with his headlamp (Sam
was on my ledge), and then he tried to direct my throws
so that I could drop Tic Tacs into Jeff's mouth. That's
how we entertained ourselves. Jeff woke up a few times
in the night gasping for breath with a minty fresh taste
lodged in the back of his throat.
In
1995 we climbed Mount McKinley, which is a twenty-thousand-foot
peak, the tallest peak in North America. It's also one
of the coldest mountains in the world. If you spit near
the top of Mount McKinley, your spit will be frozen
by the time it hits the ground. It took us twenty-one
days with no showers, but we summited on Helen Keller's
birthday, which was really special. Just last January
my friend Rick Morris and I summited a peak called Autencaugua
(23,000 feet) and the tallest peak in South America.
We had this great system that I devised; I thought I
was so smart. I connected these bells to Chris's pack
and to his ice ax so that, as he climbed in front of
me, I could follow him. But, when we left at four in
the morning and got up to about 21,000 feet, this horrendous
wind screaming off the Pacific Ocean was blowing straight
in our facesmy finger tips were cold; my feet
were cold. I couldn't hear the bells anymore, and I
thought I was going to have to turn back. But Chris
was really smart, and every five minutes or so, knowing
I couldn't hear the bells, he'd put his fingers in his
mouth and whistle at the top of his lungs. So for three
or four hours we played this bizarre game of Marco Polo
on the mountain.
When
I got to the top of the mountain, it was amazing; I
touched this metal cross that somebody had dragged up
there and planted on the top. Though blindness might
have slowed me down in certain situations on the mountain,
I try not to see it as disappointing or sad or tragic.
I see my blindness as something that makes my life an
adventure. I know that you folks do the same. Many of
you who are in this city for the first time and try
to find a restaurant downtown know that our lives can
be quite an adventure.
I embraced this spirit of adventure when I was in high
school. I went out looking for a summer job, and I decided
that I could be a dish washer. I went out to a restaurant
and asked for a job, and the person said, "Erik, we'd
love to hire you, but our kitchen is way too small.
You'd bump into things; you'd break things; you wouldn't
know how to put things away. We'd love to hire you,
but it would be dangerous, so we can't." I went to a
bigger restaurant with a really big kitchen this time,
and I asked them for a job. They said, "We'd love to
hire you, Erik, but our kitchen is way too big. You
wouldn't know where to put things away. You'd lose your
way in the kitchen, and it might be dangerous." So I
thought, now I can't go wrong. I went to a medium-sized
restaurant with a medium-sized kitchen, and I asked
for a job, and they said, "Erik, we'd love to hire you,
but our pots are way too hot; our dishes come in too
fast. You wouldn't be able to keep up." And I never
got a job that summer, but I did learn something very
valuable which has helped me in my life: people's perceptions
of blindness are often more limiting than blindness
itself.
You
see, before that I thought that, with my own actions,
with my own individual efforts, and with the strength
of my own will, I could shape people's perceptions about
me. I learned that sometimes it takes more than just
one person's individual efforts. Sometimes it takes
all of us working together, with an organization like
the National Federation of the Blind providing a foundation
and the necessary leadership to enable all of us simultaneously
bashing our heads against these barriers to find the
force to break through and feel the sun on our faces.
I
think sometimes those external barriers transform into
internal barriers, which are the most powerful of all.
I learned about these on a training climb for Mount
McKinley. We got up to a glacier called the Mere Glacier.
It was getting really cold. A storm was coming in, and
I was assigned to set up the tents. I had a major problem
because I had never set up this kind of tent before.
I had always set them up with someone else. I found
that, when I laid this tent out in front of me and tried
to orient the sleeves and loops and corners of the tent
with thick mountaineering gloves on, I was blind in
two ways. I couldn't do it. Finally my friends had to
come bail me out and set the tent up for me. I was frustrated
and embarrassed. Later I went back to Phoenix, where
I lived at the time, I took the tent to a field near
my house, and I worked with my thick mountaineering
gloves on, breaking it down and setting it up and breaking
it down again. I could hear cars slowing down looking
at this idiot out in the field in 105-degree weather
in a tank top and mountaineering gloves, setting up
a winter mountaineering tent. But by the time I got
to Mt. McKinley, I could set up tents in any conditions.
Sometimes
there is a very blurry line between the things we cannot
do and the things we can do. I've had a lot of fun over
these last years as a blind adventurer, sort of blurring
that line even further. In 1995 I had seen a lot of
blind people who had gone skydiving tandem with a person
attached to them, but I had seen only a few go solo,
and I really wanted to do that. I found that as a blind
person I could actually skydive as safely as any sighted
personeven if those people are crazy in their
own right.
I
found that I could attach computers to my ears which
would beep at certain altitudes in my helmet. I could
attach two radios around my neck with which I could
communicate with a person on the ground. So I could
jump just as safely as anyone else. The first time I
actually went solo, though, I had a jump master in the
air and I said, "If I don't hear my computer in my ear,
swoop in and pop me on the helmet." Well I got something
called sensory overload, which means you forget some
of the commands that you've set up beforehand, and she
swooped in because I didn't hear my first computer beep.
She popped me on the helmet. I was so excited to be
solo skydiving for the first time that I popped her
back on the helmet. She popped me again, and I popped
her back and said, "Thanks, I'm really having a great
time." The third time she popped me really hard, I realized
what an idiot I was being, and I pulled my chute.
Before
I became blind, I remember seeing this picture of a
person climbing a frozen waterfall. He was a tiny speck
against a massive white wall. When I became blind, I
decided that a blind person could learn how to do this,
but I was told by an expert that you can't indiscriminately
swing your sharp ice tools (which attach you to the
wall) at the ice face. You'd knock giant chunks of ice
off which would come down and kill you. This is a bad
thing in climbing. But I found through trial and error
that I could tap my ice tools very lightly against the
face and by listening for a certain sound, a certain
pitch, I would know whether it was going to be a safe
hit or whether it would be a hit that would shatter
ice on top of me. See, people thought you had to be
able to see to ice climb; they didn't know that there
were other ways of doing it.
Just
recently we climbed a thousand-meter wall of ice called
Polar Circus in the Canadian Rockies, and halfway through
the climb I took my glove off and ran my hand across
the surface of the ice. It was as cold and smooth as
a window on a winter's day. I had to take a deep breath
because of the beauty I was feeling at the tips of my
fingers. Many sighted people believe that the human
eye is the only pathway to beauty, but we know that's
just not true.
Before
I climbed El CapitanI didn't want to climb it
as a token blind person, where you're dragged to the
top of the mountain and spiked on top like a footballI
wanted to climb it an honest way. I didn't want to be
a token. I had always followed a rope so, if I had fallen,
I would have just dangled. Now I went out and learned
how to lead. It's called taking the sharp end of the
rope. What enables a team to get up a rock face is that
each person takes it in turn to lead the team up the
crack system. Your hands and feet are jammed into cracks,
and you take various sized pieces of metal gear off
your harness and jam them into the crack. As you go
a little higher, you take your rope, which is hanging
below your harness, and clip it into those pieces of
gear. If you fall, you hope those pieces of gear will
lock against the crack so you won't fall very far. If
you place them incorrectly, you'll fall hundreds of
feet, which is another bad thing in climbing. I learned
to lead. I led about a thousand feet, about a third
of El Capitan.
Now
it's actually kind of fun. I was leading on a rock face
near my home in Colorado, I popped out from a crack,
and there was a person about fifteen feet to my right.
He was leading his own route, and he looked over at
me and said, "Where you headed, dude?" (That's the way
climbers talk.) I just came right out and said, "I'm
blind, and I've never actually been on this route before.
There's supposed to be a ledge up there somewhere."
He laughed and climbed a little higher. Then he stopped
and said, "Wait, you mean like you can't see?" I said,
"No, I can't see anything." He laughed again, and I
heard his gear belt jingling as he climbed a little
higher. Then he stopped again and said, "You mean like
it's all black?" I said, "Completely."
All
of us do the things we do because we love to do them,
because of our passion for that activity. But I would
be lying if I didn't admit that a tiny bit of the fun
for me is tweaking people's sensibilities a little,
shaping their perceptions about what's possible and
what's not.
Each
of you knows that the best way to shape people's perceptions
about blindness is to take the sharp end of the rope,
to embrace that pioneering spirit of adventure, and
demonstrate the capabilities of blind people through
our actions. You know what I'm talking about, whether
you're the first blind lawyer to set up a private practice
in your community or the first blind teacher to be hired
in your school district or the first blind person in
your college to take a high-level finance class. In
many ways each of us is a pioneer embarking into uncharted
territory. Who understands this philosophy, this pioneering
spirit, better than the National Federation of the Blind?
Throughout its history it has been providing the foundation
and leadership for all of us to fulfill our dreams.
That is why the NFB has chosen to sponsor this 2001
climb of Mt. Everest once and for all to prove without
a doubt that, given the right opportunity and skill
and mindset, and backed by the most powerful blindness
organization in the world, a blind person can climb
to the top of the world.
I
believe that, if a blind person is seen succeeding safely
on an arduous peak like this one, it won't just shape
people's perceptions of blindness; it will shatter them.
The exciting part is that, when those perceptions are
rebuilt, many, many blind people will find themselves
living their lives with greater opportunity. Part of
the fun of climbing for me is that you're roped together.
When you're traveling up a glacier, you have these little
holes in the snow called crevasses. They can be hundreds
of feet deep. They can be thirty feet across. Many times
there is just a little frozen snow bridge linking one
side to the other. So roped together, one by one, the
team crosses over the bridge. As each person crosses,
the other teammates get ready to throw their ice axes
into the snow to arrest the person if he or she pops
through the snow bridge. It's pretty exciting, but it's
scary at the same time. Climbing solo is a really good
way to wind up being frozen in the bottom of a crevasse.
We know that climbing solo on a mountain isn't the best
way to cross a glacier. We know as well that climbing
solo is not the best way to improve the lives of blind
people.
On
this NFB rope team, even though we move in sync, each
of us is fulfilling unique and vital functions on the
team. If you can envision fifty thousand, a hundred
thousand blind people all moving together on one mission,
toward one dream, but each fulfilling a unique and vital
function on the team, then you can envision the scope
and the power of the NFB. It will take each of us working
together, helping each other, each person doing what
he or she can, that will enable us to climb this mountain
into first-class citizenship. We will shape and shatter
and rebuild what it means to be blind in this world.
I want to end by saying that I'm very proud and very
honored to be joining this illustrious rope team with
such pioneering legends as Dr. Broek, Dr. Jernigan,
and Dr. Maurer. I am proud to be working with each of
you as we prepare for the historic climb in 2001. Wish
us good fortune.
Thank
you.
P.S.
from the Editor: He made it!
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