Blind Everest Climber Inspires Students
Inner Vision, Not Goals, Drive Mountaineer Erik Weihenmayer
Oct 19, 2009
Many thought Erik Weihenmayer’s blindness would cripple his Mount Everest climbing team. But the day he stood atop the world’s highest peak (May 25, 2001), 19 of the team’s 21 members also summitted—a world record.
But what Weihenmayer stressed to students in Lyme, New Hampshire during an October 9, 2009 presentation was the importance of an "inner vision."
“A vision as where all our goals spring from,” said Weihenmayer, who grew up in Westport, CT. “It’s how we see ourselves serving other people and impacting the world.”
Erik Weihenmayer’s Adversity Advantage
Weihenmayer’s vision is a life dedicated to turning adversity into advantage. Weihenmayer lost his vision in junior high to retinoscheses. “I wasn’t afraid to go blind,” he said. “I was afraid of being swept to the sidelines; that I’d be forgotten and my life would be meaningless.”
In a braille newsletter, Weihenmayer learned of a rock-climbing course for the blind. “I ran my hand up the wall in my room and thought, who’d be crazy enough to take a blind kid rock climbing?” he recalled. “So I signed up.”
Weihenmayer went on to become one of fewer than 100 climbers to reach the Seven Summits, the highest peak on each continent. Following his presentation, Weihenmayer answered audience questions.
Has conquering the Seven Summits made climbing less exciting for you?
No. The Seven Summits are just a figment of peoples’ imagination. It’s what you believe in your brain; it’s seven peaks and they happen to be the tallest peaks on every continent, but that’s created by humans. People create things all the time: I’m going to do the “grand this” and they just make it up.
Did you ever doubt your abilities?
There’s a section on Everest called the Khumbu Icefall: it doesn’t conform to Americans With Disabilities standards: it’s a jumbled-up nightmare of boulders, from baseball size to skyscrapers, piled on top of each other; they roll and shift under your feet: they collapse and explode and tumble down—it’s a really scary place and I had to cross that ice fall 10 times to climb Mount Everest: you go up and down setting up your higher camps and trying to acclimatize. So many times I thought I was over my head: I’d go to sleep and hear all those negative voices: you’ve got to go down, find something easier to do. Your mind plays tricks on you—it calls you down the mountain and tries to sabotage you. You have to be ready for that and have a strong vision to be able to hold up against the mind.
Weihenmayer's Vision is Sharing His Gift with Young People
What’s the hardest mountain you’ve climbed?
The last one. I always finish a mountain and say, “That was the hardest mountain I’ve ever climbed!” I’m wasted afterwards. Then I climb another mountain and say the same thing. So, it’s always the one I just finished.
What’s your next adventure?
I’m trying to avoid the trap where I have to climb harder things, taller things: eventually life just becomes this rollercoaster of climbs and loses its meaning and can become dangerous. So I’m not just looking for what’s the next thing: I try to live according to what’s important to me. I have to be focused where I work with young people.
Weihenmayer’s vision, his work with young people, has included leading expeditions with students from Braille Without Borders, a school for the blind in Tibet. He also shares his inspirational message in books and presentations throughout the world.
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