Scaling all obstacles

Erik Weihenmayer, the former Hightstown resident who scaled Mt. Everest despite his blindness, spoke in Trenton last week.

By: Scott Morgan
   Most people would likely agree that Erik Weihenmayer leads an exciting life. At age 32, he has already reached the tops of some of the world’s tallest mountains. In fact, he has already checked off five of the fabled Seven Summits — the holy grail of mountaineering. Those who seek to conquer the Seven Summits seek to scale the tallest peak of each continent in the world.
   Europe’s Mt. El’brus? Check. Mt. McKinley? Been there. Kilimanjaro? Heck, he got married half way up that one.
   And what of Mt.. Everest, you say? Well, he just finished off that one this spring.
   So in light of Erik Weihenmayer’s accomplishments, one question seems only fitting: Has anyone told him he’s been completely blind for nearly 20 years?
   Yes, it’s true. Mr. Weihenmayer, a former Hightstown resident who gave a speech to a packed house at the Library for the Blind and Disabled in Trenton last week, lost his sight when he was 13 years old. Born with sight, Mr. Weihenmayer fell prey to retinaschesis, a separation of the retina from the eye.
   At first he rejected his blindness, of course. He only started learning Braille when a dedicated teacher piqued his interest in adventure stories. Before long, he had discovered other stories deemed "unsuitable" to younger readers in a Braille catalog. From there he invested in audio books as well (some the adventure kind and some the "unsuitable" kind). Having the books, he said was his first window to real popularity.
   "I went from being the blind guy to being the blind guy with the really rad tapes," he said.
   So just how did a young teen-ager with "rad" tapes, living in perpetual darkness, ever come to summit the world’s most forbidding slope?
   In baby steps, of course.
   Mr. Weihenmayer, who was born at Princeton Hospital, raised until 10 years old in Hightstown and living in Connecticut during his teen years, signed up for a rock-climbing excursion. The first trip was painful ("I left blood and skin on the rock face"), but he discovered something about himself that day. He realized he would never be a baseball player, nor drive a car. But there were things he could do, and one of them was rock climbing. He found that though he could no longer see with his eyes, he could see with his hands. He could feel the rock face during his ascent. He didn’t have to look it in the eye.
   After some early success, Mr. Weihenmayer said his perceptions had changed.
   "I thought, ‘Maybe there are all sorts of things I can do that I thought I couldn’t do before,’ " he said.
   So he tried them, starting with ice climbing. The difference from rock climbing, he said, is that ice climbing involves the use of picks and the ever-present danger of being crushed beneath falling sheets of ice, should a climber pick the wrong spot. The best place to swing your pick, he said, was straight into large patches of blue ice.
   To skirt the obvious problem of finding blue ice, Mr. Weihenmayer said he learned to use his ears. He would tap the ice overhead and listen for the sounds it made. Heavy, resonant clangs meant "big ice was coming down." Tinny clanks, such as the sound of a fork hitting a ceramic plate, signaled ice that would shatter like glass. But when he heard a dead, flat thud, he knew he was striking thick, stable ice.
   The tactile experience of rock climbing and ice climbing paved a natural path to mountain climbing for Mr. Weihenmayer. Over the ensuing years, he and his teams scaled some of the world’s most famous natural landmarks, from the near-vertical El Capitan in Yosemite National Park to the wind-scoured Cerro Aconcagua in Argentina (which he said he tried twice, but never made it, thanks to the winds).
   During all these climbs, Mr. Weihenmayer said, the itch to summit Mt.. Everest just kept growing. He pulled together a team of climbers, including longtime friend Chris Moore, who is a proponent of what Mr. Weihenmayer calls "positive pessimism (Example: "Sure it’s cold, but at least it’s really windy").
   Together, the team made a "practice run," which meant scaling a slightly less foreboding neighbor of Everest’s — Ama Dablam, a steep, 20,000-foot peak whose name translates into "Mother’s Jewel Box."
   The team’s practice climb ended badly. They did not summit, and one of their members dropped 150 feet on the way back down. But as most people have come to understand about Erik Weihenmayer, he did not see things the same way others see them.
   "Some people thought it was a disaster, but I saw it as a success," he said.
   The idea, he said, is to stay focused and stay in control when you are thrown into an uncontrollable situation.
   After a stint in a hyperbaric bag and some medical treatment, his friend recovered from the 150-foot fall, and the remainder of the team, despite some difficult circumstances, all made it down alive.
   But then there was Everest. A mountain he said "does not cut you a break." Many people, including John Krakauer, whose best-selling book "Into Thin Air" recounts the horrors of one of the world’s most disastrous Everest climbs, begged him not to climb. He would be a liability, Mr. Krakauer said.
   Mr. Weihenmayer countered: "I’ve been hearing skepticism all my life. Sometimes the perceptions of our disabilities are more damaging than the disabilities themselves."
   Blessed by an astonished Rimpoche, or Buddhist holy man, Mr. Weihenmayer and his team set off to summit Mt. Everest.
   Mr. Weihenmayer said he soon learned Everest is not very welcoming. Right from the beginning, climbers face a jagged, craggy, steep crevice known as the Kumbu Ice Falls. From here, and at many times throughout the climb, Mr. Weihenmayer and team were forced to traverse the deep crags on expandable ladders. He insists, however, that despite the potential of a deep fall, ladder walking was the easiest part of the climb. The predictable spaces between rungs was far easier to manage than most other parts of the mountain, he said.
   Also, despite having to climb Mt. Everest about 10 times (climbers need to acclimate and to carry gear and supplies up to higher parts of the mountain, drop them off, then come back down to rest), he said he learned to focus on the task at hand.
   "It’s amazing how our minds and bodies adjust to chaos," he said.
   He remembered a Buddhist saying which allowed him to continue through what most people would indeed consider chaos. It said, "The nature of the mind is like water. If you do not disturb it, it will become clear."
   Clarity of mind helped Mr. Weihenmayer a lot. But so, ironically, did his "handicap." Being blind he said, gave him advantages his teammates could not experience. For one thing, the cumbersome oxygen masks need to be worn low on the face in order for a climber to see, he said. Not having to worry about that, Mr. Weihenmayer said he could wear his mask high on his face and thus get more oxygen at high altitude. Besides that, he said everyone, especially at night, goes blind on Mt.. Everest.
   At the end of the line, Mr. Weihenmayer’s pessimistic friend, Mr. Moore, hugged him and told him he had reached the top of the world. The view (or lack thereof) did not matter. What mattered to him was that he had made it. And now he wanted to get back down.
   At the time, Mr. Weihenmayer said it was difficult to assign emotion to the moment he reached the summit of Everest.
   "That last step was no different than the thousands of other steps before it, except there was no place left to go," he said.
   With a big storm on its way, he said the team got off the mountain as quickly as it could. Besides, he wanted to go home to his wife and his daughter and his other best friend, his companion dog, Seigo.
   Mr. Weihenmayer said he has never taken Seigo with him on a mountain ("He’d be a dog-cicle up there"), but takes him everywhere else. Up next for Mr. Weihenmayer is to finish his quest for the Seven Summits, including another crack at Aconcagua.
   He will leave Seigo home.