Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: No Barriers: A Blind Man’s Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon
WORK NOTES: with Buddy Levy
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 9/23/1968
WEBSITE: http://www.touchthetop.com/
CITY:
STATE: CO
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.touchthetop.com/about-erik * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Weihenmayer
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born September 23, 1968; married, 1997; children: daughter, son.
EDUCATION:Graduated from Boston College.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Phoenix Country Day School, teacher and wrestling coach. No Barriers, cofounder, 2005.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Erik Weihenmayer became the first blind person to summit Mount Everest in 2001, and he has since gone on to set several records as a blind outdoorsman. Yet, as Weihenmayer explained in an online Homiletics interview, his drive to achieve is the same as anyone else’s. He states: “There’s no difference between the summit and five feet below the summit. As human beings we want to stand on the very top. It’s something about achievement. You want to get to the top of the mountain, but in a sense, it’s not really a physical place because the top of a mountain is windy and cold and people talk about the great view from the summit, but there’s not necessarily a great view.” In fact, he added: “You’re looking down into the clouds and snow, and so on. Sometimes, there’s a nice view, but a summit is less of a physical place and more of a metaphor for the meaning of your life. You can make your life what you want it to be.”
Weihenmayer is the author of two memoirs, Touch the Top of the World and No Barriers: A Blind Man’s Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon. The first recounts Weihenmayer’s life and climb of Mount Everest, while the second explains how Weihenmayer trained to kayak the Colorado River and its dangerous rapids. As the author explained in his Homiletics interview, “I’m not a blind Evil Knievel. I don’t take crazy risks. I take calculated risks. I’m more of a thinker. I look at something that seems impossible and I figure out a system to do it. And it seems crazy on the surface, but if you look at the details, the time, the skill and all the work I’ve done to make it [as] safe as I can, you say, ‘Okay, that’s pretty reasonable.'”
Touch the Top of the World
In Touch the Top of the World Weihenmayer explains how a degenerative eye disease claimed his sight by the time he was in his teens. Around the same time, Weihenmayer’s mother was killed in a car accident. Rather than succumb to depression in the wake of these events, Weihenmayer writes that he was determined to live a fulfilling and exciting life. Weihenmayer thus parlayed his love of the outdoors into a series of adventures most sighted people would not dare to attempt. He scaled El Capitán in Yosemite National Park, married his wife on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, scaled Aconcagua in Argentina, and finally took on Mount Everest.
Praising the author’s insights in Geographical, Jon Tinker stated that “the story he tells is extraordinary.” Janet Ross, writing in Library Journal, was also impressed; she found that “Weihenmayer is an extraordinary individual, adventurer, and athlete. . . . This inspirational story is highly recommended for all public libraries.” As David Pitt noted in Booklist, “the word inspiring is used far too often in book reviews, but here . . . it really is appropriate.” Indeed, according to a Publishers Weekly critic, with “the insightful intimacy . . . and the intensity of the best adventure narratives, Weihenmayer’s story will appeal to a broad audience.” Commending the memoir further, Kliatt correspondent Edna M. Boardman announced: “Weihenmayer allows readers entree into his doubts and deepest feelings.”
No Barriers
Weihenmayer largely focuses on the immense preparations required for him to attempt to kayak the Colorado River in No Barriers. As the author explains in the book, mountains stand still, but a river is always changing. Weihenmayer thus had to learn how to navigate eddies and rapids by feel and sound alone. As he comments on his training regimen, Weihenmayer also discusses how neuroplasticity functions to cement training into skill. He additionally writes about the people who helped him train, as well as the adoption of his son.
Most critics lauded the memoir, but in a rare negative assessment, a Publishers Weekly contributor advised that “the only thing readers will be amazed by is that Weihenmayer’s accomplishments manage to be boring.” On the other hand, a Kirkus Reviews columnist announced that “Weihenmayer elaborates on the skills required to achieve significant goals,” resulting in “a wonderful tribute to the greatness of the human spirit.” Brenda Barrera, writing in Booklist, was equally laudatory; she felt that “this volume provides a powerful testament to the human spirit.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Weihenmayer, Erik, Touch the Top of the World, Dutton (New York, NY), 2001.
Weihenmayer, Erik, No Barriers: A Blind Man’s Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon (with Buddy Levy), St. Martin’s Press (New York, NY), 2017.
PERIODICALS
Booklist, February 1, 2001, David Pitt, review of Touch the Top of the World; December 1, 2016, Brenda Barrera, review of No Barriers: A Blind Man’s Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon.
Geographical, September, 2001, Jon Tinker, review of Touch the Top of the World.
Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2016, review of No Barriers.
Kliatt, September, 2002, Edna M. Boardman, review of Touch the Top of the World.
Library Journal, February 15, 2001, Janet Ross, review of Touch the Top of the World.
Publishers Weekly, January 8, 2001, review of Touch the Top of the World; September 12, 2016, review of No Barriers.
ONLINE
Homiletics, https://www.homileticsonline.com/(July 17, 2017), author interview.
No Barriers Foundation Web site, http://www.nobarriersusa.org/ (July 17, 2017).
Touch the Top Web site, http://touchthetop.com/ (July 17, 2017).*
About Erik
On May 25, 2001, Erik Weihenmayer became the only blind person to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. In 2008 he climbed Carstensz Pyramid on the island of Papua New Guinea, completing the Seven Summits, the highest point on every continent. This accomplishment closed the circuit on a 13-year journey that had begun with his 1995 ascent of Denali. He is joined by a select company of only 150 mountaineers to have accomplished the feat.
As word spread about Erik’s remarkable achievements, the world took notice; shortly after his summit of Everest, he was honored with a Time cover story detailing his conquest of the world’s highest peak. Since then, he has authored multiple books, including his memoir, Touch the Top of the World. Yet for those who had long known him, his propensity for taking on and knocking down the loftiest of challenges came as no surprise.
Even as retinoschisis began to rob him of his vision by the age of 13, Erik resisted the idea that blindness would sweep him to the sidelines of life. He established himself as a formidable wrestler in high school, representing his home state of Connecticut in the National Junior Freestyle Wrestling Championship in Iowa. As a teenager, he also discovered rock climbing and a natural dexterity for the tactile aspects of scanning the rock with his hands and feet for holds.
After graduating a double major from Boston College, Erik became a middle-school teacher and wrestling coach at Phoenix Country Day School. Yet it was atop the highest point in North America, the mountain known in the native Inuit language as Denali, where his quest for adventure began to take shape. Erik’s triumphs over some of the world’s most formidable mountains were fueling a growing aspiration to take the lessons he learned in the mountains to help others shatter barriers in their lives.
To advance this idea, Erik co-founded not merely an organization, but rather a movement called No Barriers. The mission is to help people with challenges, all of us to some extent, to turn into the storm of life, face barriers head on, embrace a pioneering and innovative spirit and team up with great people to live rich in meaning and purpose. The motto is "what's within you is stronger than what's in your way." To this aim, Erik continues to challenge himself to live a No Barriers Life and in September 2014 he kayaked the entire 277-miles of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.
Erik Weihenmayer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Erik Weihenmayer presenting on stage.
Erik Weihenmayer (born September 23, 1968) is an American athlete, adventurer, author, activist and motivational speaker, and the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on May 25, 2001. He was honored with a Time Magazine cover story. He also completed the Seven Summits in September 2002, joining 150 mountaineers at the time who had accomplished that feat, but the only climber who was blind. In 2008 he also added Carstensz Pyramid in West Papua New Guinea, the tallest peak in Australasia, thus completing the more respected Seventh Summit. Weihenmayer has also made noteworthy climbs up the Nose of El Capitan in Yosemite in 1996, and ascended Losar, a 2700-foot vertical ice face in the Himalayas which he ascended in two days and 3 hours, in 2008.
He is the author of Touch the Top of the World: A Blind Man's Journey to Climb Farther Than the Eye Can See, his memoir; and The Adversity Advantage, Turning Everyday Struggles into Everyday Greatness.
As he was going blind from juvenile retinoschisis, Weihenmayer fought against using canes and learning Braille. He wanted to hang on to his life in the sighted world. He eventually turned to wrestling and became a prominent force in high school. He represented Connecticut in the National Junior Freestyle Wrestling Championship in Iowa. At age 16, he started using a guide dog. He tried rock climbing, and found he was a natural at scrambling up a face using his hands and feet to find holds. Then he attended Boston College and graduated with a double major in English and Communications. He became a middle-school teacher at Phoenix Country Day School.[1][2] He also coached wrestling in Phoenix.
Weihenmayer’s first big mountain was McKinley (Denali), in 1995. In 2004, with Sabriye Tenberken and six blind Tibetan teenagers, he climbed on the north side of Everest to 21,500 feet, higher than any group of blind people have ever stood. A documentary based on the project, Blindsight, was released in 2006.
In 2005 Weihenmayer co-founded No Barriers USA (http://nobarriersusa.org/), which helps those with special challenges to live active and purposeful lives. The organization’s motto is “What's Within You Is Stronger Than What's In Your Way!” Injured soldiers are a major focus of No Barriers USA.
In 2011, his 3-person team competed on ABC's Expedition Impossible, a race across the deserts and mountains of Morocco, finishing second. He has also completed the Leadville 100 Mountain Bike Race, at elevations above 10,000 feet, and Primal Quest, an adventure race over 460 miles with 60,000 feet of elevation gains.
In September 2014, with fellow blind kayaker, Lonnie Bedwell, Weihenmayer kayaked the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, 277 miles from Lee's Ferry to Pierce Ferry.
Today, while still adventuring, he is a prominent worldwide speaker, focusing on the topic of using adversity to advantage and living a "No Barriers Life".
Contents
1 Bibliography
2 See also
3 References
4 External links
Bibliography
Weihenmayer, Erik, Touch the Top of the World: A Blind Man's Journey to Climb Farther Than the Eye can See, Plume, 2002, ISBN 0-452-28294-2, ISBN 978-0-452-28294-0
Weihenmayer, Erik & Stoltz, Paul, The Adversity Advantage: Turning Everyday Struggles into Everyday Greatness, Touchstone, 2006, ISBN 0-7432-9022-4, ISBN 978-0-7432-9022-7
Receives Honorary Doctorate Degree on 16 May 2009 from the FW Olin School of Business at the Babson College MA
Board Vice President, No Barriers USA
Erik has become a celebrated and accomplished athlete despite losing his vision at the age of 13. Redefining what it means to be blind, Erik has transformed the image of blindness and opened up the minds of people around the world.
On May 25, 2001, Erik became the first blind climber in history to reach the summit of the world’s highest mountain, Mount Everest. At the age of 33, he became one of less than 100 individuals to climb all of the Seven Summits – the highest peaks on each of the seven continents.
Erik refuses to let blindness interfere with his passion for an exhilarating and fulfilling life and actively seeks opportunities to help others adopt a similar mindset. In 2004, Erik and his Everest teammates led a group of blind Tibetan teenagers to 21,000 feet on the north face of Everest as an educational outreach project. Their journey was documented in the film Blindsight. In 2010, Erik and his Everest team led the first Soldiers to Summits climb to the summit of Lobuche in the Himalayas, a quest documented in the film High Ground.
A former middle school teacher and wrestling coach, Erik is the author of Touch the Top of the World and The Adversity Advantage. He is the recipient of numerous awards, among them the prestigious National Courage Award and the 2002 ESPN ESPY award.
Erik lives with his wife and two children in Colorado.
Erik Weihenmayer: The only way to climb Everest is to go do it
Christine Wang | @christiiineeee
Monday, 4 Apr 2016 | 9:50 AM ET
Summiting Mount Everest without sight
Summiting Everest without sight
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817
SHARES
Erik Weihenmayer's accomplishments seem surreal — impossible even.
Weihenmayer is the only blind person to climb the Seven Summits, which consists of scaling the tallest peaks on each continent. In 2014, he also solo kayaked the Grand Canyon, a journey of 277 miles along the Colorado River. Then there are his 50 solo sky dives.
"When I think about mountain climbing, I never think about conquering because if you go head to head with a mountain, the mountain will kick your butt. The mountain will destroy you," he said.
"You have to have a sense of humility when you go up to climb these mountains," Weihenmayer said. "I've always had humility because I was, you know, having my butt kicked by blindness."
Erik Weihenmayer
Hyoung Chang | The Denver Post | Getty Images
Erik Weihenmayer
That humility was hard earned. The blind adventurer lost his sight to a rare disease, juvenile retinoschisis, when he was 13. Weihenmayer said he had a hard time adjusting.
"When I went totally blind that freshman year, I was headstrong. I didn't want to use a cane. I didn't want to learn Braille. I didn't want to do any of the things that blind people are supposed to do because I thought that would make me blind, that would be accepting," he said.
As a result of his denial, Weihenmayer said he "fell down stairs and bashed his head open" until he realized he needed to accept his new life and use the tools available to him.
After adapting to his new reality, Weihenmayer discovered he had a natural talent for rock climbing fueling his hunger for outdoor adventure. He became the first blind person to scale the Nose of El Capitan in Yosemite in 1996.
"There's certain things that you can never work out ahead of time. ... The only way to experience that is to go do it." -Erik Weihenmayer
Weihenmayer is the first to credit his team with helping him achieve these milestones. For his Grand Canyon adventure, he had a friend guiding him with specific directions along the way.
"They're yelling. 'Turn a left!' 'Turn a right!' 'Hard left!' 'Charge!' ... very specific directions that get me through the rapids," Weihenmayer said.
"Teams don't just happen or maybe you get lucky every now and then, but you've got to build them carefully, very methodically," he said "You got to learn how to trust each other, how to rely on each other and how to be accountable to each other. That happens over time."
‹
Amy Purdy in action during training on Dec. 18, 2013, in Copper Mountain, Colorado.
Amy Purdy: Life is too short not to move forward
Cal Ripken Jr. stretches to reach a ground ball during a game in 1997
What baseball taught Cal Ripken about business
›
No matter how good your team is of how prepared you are, sometimes things happen outside of your realm of control.
"There's certain things that you can never work out ahead of time. When I went to Everest, going into the death zone, it's 26,000 feet above and there's no way to experience that. The only way to experience that is to go do it."
'All of us in a way are climbing blind'
By Natalie Angley, CNN
Updated 0101 GMT (0901 HKT) May 12, 2016
Blind adventurer reaches new heights
Blind adventurer reaches new heights 01:32
Story highlights
Erik Weihenmayer lost his sight at age 13
Weihenmayer is the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest
He helps others overcome obstacles through his nonprofit, No Barriers
(CNN)Erik Weihenmayer has scaled the seven summits and braved the violent rapids of the Colorado River — in the dark.
But his greatest challenge started at 4 years old when he was diagnosed with a rare eye disease called juvenile retinoschisis. For almost 10 years, Weihenmayer was faced with an inevitable truth: One day he wouldn't be able to see the world around him.
By his freshman year in high school, Weihenmayer was blind.
"I wanted to be with my friends and going on dates," he says. "I was afraid that I wasn't going to be able to participate in life."
But his parents refused to let him sit on the sidelines.
"My dad would sweep me out into the world and I'd get beat up a little bit and shattered," he recalls. "And my mom would build me up and my dad would sweep me out again. And that's a hard thing to do as a parent."
Before losing his sight, Weihenmayer couldn't participate in physical sports because it would damage his retinas, making his sight get worse at a faster pace. In a way, going blind allowed him to start his life.
At 17, Erik Weihenmayer's guide dog Wizard helped him navigate his surroundings.
At 17, Erik Weihenmayer's guide dog Wizard helped him navigate his surroundings.
He joined the wrestling team and went all the way to the National Junior Freestyle Wrestling Championship in Iowa.
"Wrestling really changed my life because it was the first time as a blind person that I was a part of something bigger than me," Weihenmayer says.
He also learned how to rock climb.
"I remember loving rock climbing because it's a stable rock face. It's not moving, hopefully, and you're just feeling your way up the rock face," he says.
After graduating from Boston College, Weihenmayer moved to Phoenix to be a teacher. He spent every weekend rock climbing with the Arizona Mountaineering Club.
His quest for adventure began to take shape after he and a team of friends climbed Denali, the tallest peak in North America.
"I thought how amazing to make your life like this great adventure and just go around and be on every continent climbing the tallest peak," he remembers.
After scaling four of the seven summits, he set his sights on Everest.
"A lot of the Himalayan experts said the ice is so hard up high, you can't throw your ice ax down into the snow so you cannot stop if you fall," Weihenmayer says. "You can't think at high altitude. Above 26,000 feet, you're in the 'death zone' so your brain doesn't work very well. So it wouldn't be a good place for a blind person."
But he never lost hope.
"They were judging me on the basis of one thing that they knew about me and that was being blind. But they didn't realize that there are a dozen other attributes that contribute to whether you're a good mountaineer or not," he says.
Weihenmayer put together a strong team, received funding from the National Federation of the Blind and set out on his most dangerous and deadly expedition.
"You gotta keep an open, clear mind throughout the whole experience. You get beat down one day, just completely crushed, and you gotta wake up the next day and do it all over again," he says.
Despite his critics, in 2001, Weihenmayer became the first blind person in history to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
"You can't even believe it in a way that you're standing up there. You're with your team, and yeah, there might be a few tears. You hold your flag and you get your photos but then you have to turn around and get down," he recalls. "You gotta get down alive."
Erik Weihenmayer, center, reached the summit of Mount Everest in 2001.
Erik Weihenmayer, center, reached the summit of Mount Everest in 2001.
Weihenmayer not only made it down the mountain, he went on to climb the remaining seven summits in 2008.
Always seeking new adventures, Weihenmayer spent the next six years training to kayak the 277 miles of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.
"Sitting above a rapid knowing that in the next two minutes you're going through absolute insanity ... it was a very different experience from climbing," he says.
Weihenmayer used waterproof Bluetooth radios to communicate with his guide. He and nine other paddlers made it through the Grand Canyon in 20 days.
"I'm not just doing these things so I can prove that blind people can do this or that. That's kind of shallow," he says. "You do it because that's living fully."
Weihenmayer is using that mantra to help others. He co-founded the nonprofit No Barriers in 2005 to help people overcome obstacles through educational programs, adaptive activities and transformative experiences.
"No Barriers is about really figuring out how to tap into whatever we've got inside of us and then build the tools and the community around us to break through barriers, live with purpose and be the person you're meant to be," he says.
Throughout his life, Weihenmayer has been featured in three documentaries and written three books: "Touch the Top of the World," "The Adversity Advantage" and "No Barriers," which will be available in February 2017.
The now 47-year-old, who lives in Colorado with his wife and two kids, also uses his story to inspire others through motivational speeches.
"It really takes this mindset of not being afraid to turn into the storm," he says. "In our lives all of us in a way are climbing blind."
Erik Weihenmayer Biography: A Blind Man's Ambitious Will to Climb Mt. Everest
Photograph by Travis Dove / New York Times / Redux
by Chris Norris
Three men in kayaks cruise along Mexico's Usumacinta River, a light cross breeze rippling its brilliant teal surface. Erik Weihenmayer pilots the center boat, a cobalt-hulled, eight-and-a-half-foot Liquid Logic Stomper 90, outfitted for long distance. He takes even, powerful strokes, sending tiny droplets flying off his center-bent Werner paddles, as his colleagues, Rob Raker, 58, and Chris Wiegand, 40, move briskly with him in tight formation. Wiegand leads in a compact yellow freestyle boat; Raker is right behind Weihenmayer, sitting deep in a weathered red hardshell, beaming behind aviator shades.
"Lookin' good, Big E!" Raker roars – both to Weihenmayer and to the spectacular wilderness. Weihenmayer's slight wry smile in response offsets the impression he gives, with his burly frame, brooding looks, and multi-impact helmet, of an NHL enforcer on vacation.
The half-dozen other men in their group are scattered ahead and behind along this winding river in Mexico's remote southeastern corner, where they've just begun an intensive, weeklong kayak training run. Only their laughter carries over the wide expanse of water to the high rain forest walls, where it is quickly eaten by jungle chatter and the deep, nightmarish roars of the howler monkeys that inspired the Mayan name Usumacinta, or "Sacred Monkey River." No one watching these three kayakers would notice anything unusual about them. But few could imagine what Weihenmayer is doing – or has been doing for most of his life.
(Courtesy Erik Weihenmayer)
The 45-year-old pro adventurer is best known as the only blind person to climb Mount Everest, in 2001, a feat that landed him on the cover of Time at age 32 and made him an international symbol of courage. Weihenmayer also solo skydives and paraglides. He skis double-black slopes and backcountry. He and a small team raced a dozen others across the deserts of Morocco. He has climbed each of mountaineering's vaunted Seven Summits and scaled the 3,000-foot rock face of Yosemite's El Capitan, along with the 2,000-foot, technically tougher frozen Himalayan waterfall Losar.
But despite these achievements, this trip down the Usumacinta has Weihenmayer seriously considering his limitations. For one thing, there's the fact that he's a blind man kayaking. "I've often thought, 'Why am I doing this?' " he says. "This is not what a blind person should be doing." Then again, his sighted companions probably shouldn't be doing this, either.
The Usumacinta happens to run through Mexico's conflict-ridden state of Chiapas and along the border with Guatemala – a region where crocodiles, narcos, and banditos limit traffic to paddlers who are more than slightly adventurous. When Weihenmayer's crew trained here just over a year ago, one tricky canyon passage provided the added thrill of an RPG missile whizzing overhead.
They've returned to prepare Weihenmayer for something scarier than close-proximity military ordnance, and everyone is ferociously dedicated to helping him succeed – or at least survive. This September, in what may be his toughest in a life of self-imposed impossible missions, Weihenmayer will attempt to kayak the entire length of the Grand Canyon. He will put in at Lee's Ferry, nine miles south of the Arizona-Utah border, and paddle 277 miles of the Colorado River: through 15-foot waves, 26-foot falls, and school bus–size whirlpools, facing 200-odd rapids with names like Upset and Specter, plus the hundred unnamed others that would merit a "Satan's Maw" or "Deadman's Neck" on any other river.
It's an inadvisable trip without Class IV rapids skills, an insane one without sight, and Weihenmayer will undertake it with probably the sole human who's as blind and nuts as he is, military vet Lonnie Bedwell. The 49-year-old Indiana native lost his sight in a 1997 hunting accident and went on a gung-ho sortie down the Grand Canyon River last summer with veterans group Team River Runner, with whom he'd learned to kayak just one year earlier. While surviving the trip won Bedwell the distinction of being the Grand Canyon's first blind kayaker, his and Weihenmayer's September trip will be profoundly different – a crew of the world's top kayakers have joined in Weihenmayer's near-samurai mode of achieving the impossible.
Weihenmayer regards the Grand Canyon challenge as less a test of mettle than of a discipline and philosophy he has lived by for nearly two decades. "I mean, I know I can survive it," he says of the run. "But I climbed for 10 years before I did Everest. I feel like I should build up in a classic way to these big endeavors in the world."
Consider a snapshot from the summer of 1995, when Weihenmayer – then a 27-year-old teacher at an Arizona elementary school – walked onto a sunbaked playing field with an arctic mountain tent, plopped down, donned polar mountaineering gloves, and, in 100-degree heat, began erecting and dismantling the tent for hours on end until he had the task down to just a few minutes.
He'd struggled with the tent on a recent climb up Mount Rainier, and since his fingers pinch-hit for his eyes, he'd removed one glove for just long enough to locate a tent seam – and felt his hand freeze into an agonized cinder block before it even touched fabric. On the mountain that day, he made a pledge that he'd later recount in his memoir, Touch the Top of the World: "The things I could not do, I would let go; but the things I could do, I would learn to do well."
Eighteen years and dozens of summits later, the things he's painstakingly mastered are too numerous and various to count. It's clear that his blindness opened up extraordinary reserves of creativity and discipline. At the same time, he reflexively bats away most direct praise. "I get the focus for being the 'blind kayaker,' ?" Weihenmayer told me. "But Rob, Chris, and my other guides are totally consumed. Instead of their own kayaking, they're watching this little remote-control guy going down the river and completely manipulating his destiny." He refines the analogy: "A little remote-control guy who doesn't do expected things; a video game with a bad joystick and a glitch in the software."
But here on the Usumacinta, it's apparent that this little remote-control guy will have to kayak better and more instinctively than most sighted paddlers. Right now, Team Big E is locking into gear: Point man Wiegand scans downstream for white flumes or surface rotation, tasked with finding "the line" of green water running through the white chaos and away from holes, boils, haystacks, and other hydraulic terrors that kayakers euphemistically call features. Raker, the rear guide, follows both the line and Weihenmayer's movements, a round foam headset microphone by his mouth ready to transmit commands like "hard paddle right" and "hard-paddle left" the instant they need to be executed.
Today's trip is intentionally free of any hard-core paddling. As with high-altitude climbing, the early stages of serious kayaking are about acclimatization more than distance, with each new launch requiring an autonomic adjustment. "Kayaking is really more neurological than muscular," says Wiegand. "A lot of people think it's about physical strength – overpowering the force of the rapids – but really, you want to be neuroskeletal: nimble, reflexive, relaxed. Even in total chaos, it should be intuitive."
But chaos is on the itinerary. The charted rapids on the Usumacinta reach Class IV, and uncharted dangers can appear with little warning – less if you can't see. Last year, Weihenmayer's first run down the Usumacinta left him so spun out, he considered quitting the sport entirely.
"The whirlpools and the boils were really crazy," he says. "I got in over my head. I was paddling as hard as I could, and I couldn't get anywhere; this whirlpool was still sucking my boat in." Eventually, he was forced to "swim" – kayak parlance for the gasping, bobbing struggle that follows whitewater ejection – and even on dry land found his body wouldn't let him get back into his boat. "I was so adrenalized I could barely stand," he says. "That made me go, 'I don't know if I can get comfortable in this environment.' "
Instead of quitting, he improved his skills, undertaking additional expeditions in Colorado and Brazil, and logging four long days on the artificial rapids at the U.S. Whitewater Center, in Charlotte, North Carolina. There, Raker and two Olympic kayakers drilled Weihenmayer on his combat roll, his draw stroke, and the other skills he'd need to survive the overwhelming force they call big water.
"[Kayaking] is right in his trajectory," says pro mountaineer Jeff Evans, Weihenmayer's guide on Everest and a dozen other mountains. "That's how he's wired. It's not just kayaking – it's everything. He needs to see what he's capable of. He wants to be scared."
In this, at least, he has succeeded. "More than anything else I've ever done, kayaking has made me work to somehow get a hold of my fear and panic," says Weihenmayer. "To really have discipline over my mind is by far the hardest thing I've ever done."An abrupt tropicaL sunset ends our first day on the Usumacinta, and the team is dug into the shoreline for the night. Along a steep and cratered wedge of sand, men are securing tents, sipping rum, applying weapons-grade bug repellent, and switching on their LED headlamps as the black rain forest swallows the last of the light – all but the one kayaker who never needs a flashlight. Cast in the glow of a small campfire, Weihenmayer is a quietly arresting presence, his physical brawn offset by a quick tenor and the fixed-eye expression of a perpetually quizzical geology prof.
"Mountains are slow," he says. "You're plodding up the rock face – it's about power and endurance. With kayaking, you have this crazy, powerful environment happening underneath you, this thing that's like a fifth element, that does crazy things that are hard to understand and impossible to anticipate. Eddies go in opposite directions, waves hit you in weird directions, and holes suck you down when you aren't expecting it. It feels like going into a battlefield."
The environment has come to trigger a combat-like response in Weihenmayer's body. "The other month, I threw up just at the sound of the rapid below me," says Weihenmayer. "Now I'm at this point where I'm having dreams – where I'm kayaking and I don't have a guide, and I'm, like, flying down, down this crazy rapid, and I can hear these giant walls around me, and I'm like, 'I got no guide,' and I hear this noise . . . ." While Weihenmayer now calls kayaking "10 times scarier than the scariest thing I've ever done," he is someone who's been doing scary things practically since birth.
When Weihenmayer was an infant, his jittery eye movement sent him and his parents to nearly a dozen different eye doctors over two years before they got a diagnosis of juvenile retinoschisis, a rare hereditary condition that causes the retinas to disintegrate. "The doctor said, 'I'm sorry to inform you that your son will be blind by the age of 13,' " recalls Weihenmayer's father, Ed, who later had to tell a boy who'd just learned to walk that he'd go blind before reaching high school.
The youngest of three boys born to an ex-Marine and Princeton football star, Weihenmayer didn't go gently. While his disease robbed him of his central vision, it spared the peripheral long enough for him to choose a life strategy of denial over adaptation. "In seventh or eighth grade, I'd look way up or way down as I walked," he says, recalling navigating solely with his remaining peripheral vision. "I was a little shit to my Braille teacher because learning Braille would mean I was blind, and I didn't want anything to do with blindness." His father recalls him tossing a white cane off a bridge to get run over by oncoming traffic.
On the grade school basketball court, Weihenmayer's jump shot was decent, his aim was terrible, "but he was just crazy on zone defense," says his dad. On the streets of his hometown of Weston, Connecticut, he'd tear along on his bike and do jumps on two homemade bike-stunt ramps, furiously pedaling dead at them until the stage when he could barely see the ramps – at which point his father spray-painted them bright orange. "It probably gave him three or four months of being able to be Evil Knievel," says Ed. "He just fought to stay in the sighted world."
Losing this fight enabled Erik's first true victory. Deteriorating vision kept him from participating in most school sports, but as a totally blind freshman, he made the high school wrestling team. This was thanks in part to an enlightened coach who showed no mercy to the 5-foot-9, 114-pound blind kid, letting him get pummeled and slammed to the mat hundreds of times before he won his first match. "I'd actually rate his innate athletic ability above-average," says Ed. "But his focus, perseverance, and stamina are A-triple-plus." By his senior year, he'd become the team captain and competed in 1987's National Freestyle Wrestling Championships in Iowa. He had discovered the first thing he could do exceptionally well without sight.
He discovered the second the next summer, when a blind camp sent him to a rock-climbing course in North Conway, New Hampshire. A counselor taught him and his mates a mode of echolocation common to most blind people: listening for the precise collisions of sounds that delineate a space's topography, then creating a mental map of their surroundings. But once they roped and harnessed at the base of Cathedral Ledge, the climbing instructor told them not to get their hopes up. He wasn't sure if ears, hands, and feet could substitute for a climber's eyes.
While his peers tapped out after a few valiant efforts, Weihenmayer nearly scurried up the first ascent, earning the nickname Monkey Boy. He almost immediately intuited an alternative rock-climbing strategy. "What I like about rock climbing is that I can't see the hold," he says. "So I have to scan my hand across the face in a systematic, grid-like way," adding that the system has a dynamic pace. "I don't have time to hang out. One arm is locked off, and I'm losing energy as I scan. But then I start finding patterns – if this crack is moving up to the right, it might open up into a handhold. Nature doesn't give up its patterns very easily, but you can find them if you're really looking. And it feels amazing when you do."
At the top of his first summit, North Conway's Whitehorse Ledge, Weihenmayer had a vivid realization. "I could hear all the way down into civilization," he says. "I could hear all that huge open space. And I remember thinking, 'Fucking A, I can do this. This is adventure. It's everything I envisioned.' "
Weihenmayer's challenges as a kid didn't end with blindness. "His mom was a fierce advocate for him," his father recalls. But in 1985, his father arrived at Weihenmayer's summer camp to inform him his mother had just been killed in a car accident – a blow Weihenmayer calls "worse than going blind a thousand times." Ed Weihenmayer tried to cope by planning a three-week bonding trek at some exotic locale with his three sons.
"Erik was the one who said, 'We should do the Inca Trail in Machu Picchu,' " says Ed. A few years later, after convincing a guide to let a 19-year-old college freshman be the first blind person to make the trek, the Weihenmayers flew to Peru, and Weihenmayer stumblingly, painfully hiked the entire Inca Trail, beginning to develop the system that he'd use to scale Mount Everest.
"I'd sort of be steering Erik with my hand on his shoulder," recalls Ed. "So we'd hit a root or miss a step and go tumbling off the trail and wind up all bloody and scratched." Neither one found this much fun. "Hiking in Peru was a miserable struggle because I didn't know how to do it," says Weihenmayer. "We were just stumbling along, and we didn't have the right system or tools."
His older brother Mark took over their dad's guiding duties, with a looser hold and more explicit trail directions, and the two took on increasingly difficult treks around the world, hiking across Tajikistan's Pamir Mountains, Pakistan's Karakoram range, and the Indonesian province West Papua.
In 2004, Weihenmayer flew to Lhasa to lead an expedition up Mount Everest's north side with six teenagers from the first and only blind school in the region, which a blind German social worker had founded against local opposition. "The Buddhist culture there says that you did something bad in a previous life, so you deserve this blindness," Weihenmayer says. "That attitude is a part of a lot of Third World cultures."
(Photograph by Jamie Kripke)
Years ago, Weihenmayer's understanding of such cultures inspired him to found the No Barriers organization, a nonprofit that helps facilitate adventures for blind children around the world. But off the podium and Oprah's couch – Weihenmayer has been a guest on national programs ranging from Larry King to The Tonight Show – he's a far cry from the relentlessly upbeat, slightly dopey, indomitable spirit of after-school specials. "He's very witty and clever, and he knows how to push people's buttons," says Jeff Evans. "And he can use that distant stare to kind of add to that 'F you.' "
A huge tropic moon hangs over the Usumacinta. The campsite is quiet, the fire is dying, and Weihenmayer decides to begin making his way over the steep, deeply cratered shoreline to his tent. Half rising to leave, he waves one level arm out in a searching sweep that I interrupt to ask what he's looking for.
I'm pretty sure I see the Weihenmayer "F you" play briefly across his features, as he continues his perimeter sweep. He utters a soft, ironic "Ohhh, what do you think?" – then taps and snatches up the same Leki hiking pole he's used to navigate every inch of our trip thus far. Which had been standing planted in sand right in front of my big dumb face.
"G'night!"By 10 am, the sun has set the campsite sand ablaze, as Weihenmayer's crew cinches up rubber dry bags and lashes gear to hardshells, preparing for their second day. Weihenmayer stands at the shoreline, conferring with two others about the river. "See that eddy line right over there?" he says at one point, then raises a trekking pole and points directly at a subtle demarcation in the rapids 30-odd yards away.
Still blinking sleep from my eyes as I try to locate the eddy line, it takes me a moment to remember that Weihenmayer can't actually see it. He had used his hearing to pick up the distinctly pitched rush of an eddy line and used it to update a mental map of the surroundings. "You get into this mode where you totally forget he's blind," says his wife, Ellie. "You're in the airport and you're looking back and you're like, 'Oh, my God, somebody go get Erik.' "
Weihenmayer met Ellie Reeves in 1993, when they were both teachers at the prestigious Phoenix Country Day School, a job he took for easy access to better climbing. As Weihenmayer thrived teaching English and math to fifth graders, his secret romance with Reeves was exposed by his guide dog, Wizard, who began back-burning guiding duties to track Ellie in the halls. She and Weihenmayer were married and now live in Golden, Colorado, with two children: Emma, their 13-year-old daughter, and Arjun, the 10-year-old son they adopted from a Kathmandu orphanage in 2008.
At Phoenix Country Day, Weihenmayer also met a substitute teacher named Sam Bridgham, who became his rock-climbing partner. Some time early into their partnership, Bridgham suggested they scale the highest peak in North America. "I thought Sam was a lunatic," Weihenmayer recalls of hearing his buddy's proposal they take on Alaska's Mount McKinley, known to alpinists by its Athabascan name, Denali, for "the Big One."
Pro mountaineer Evans, who'd met Bridgham on an EMT wilderness course, also assumed Bridgham was joking about a blind climber who was ready for Denali. But when Sam drove Weihenmayer out to Evans' home near Joshua Tree, California, he agreed to bring him rock climbing. "I didn't know how good he was," Evans says. "But he just kept crushing each route I took him on." By sunset, the two had finished the toughest climb in the area. "And I'm like, 'Well, the sun's down – why don't we head down to camp and drink a beer?' And he looked me straight in the eyes and said, 'You think I give a shit that the sun's gone down?' ?" Evans sparked a headlamp, and the two kept climbing until three in the morning. "I knew all he needed was a team that would commit to him and to doing something big," he says.
They enlisted the seasoned mountain guide Chris Morris to lead them on Denali, began an intensive training regimen, and went on team-building ascents of Washington's Mount Rainer and Colorado's Longs Peak, mastering belaying, crevasse rescues, and other skills. They set off for Denali in June of 1995, enduring a 19-day climb up the 20,320-foot peak – an elevation gain greater than Everest's – during which members of two other teams died and a third's became paraplegic.
Six years later, Weihenmayer stood atop Everest and expanded the world's sense of possibility.
Then he kept going. In 2002, he became one of the 350 humans who have scaled the Seven Summits. A year later, he became the sole blind member of the 50-odd other lunatics who completed the brutal 457-mile adventure race called Primal Quest. In 2008, he climbed the Carstensz Pyramid, and in 2010 he completed the hundred-mile Leadville 100 mountain bike race.
In 2008, Weihenmayer was a passenger on a Grand Canyon whitewater rafting trip with Global Explorers, acting as mentor to a small group of blind and sighted kids. The river guide was a man named Harlan Taney, who at one point asked Weihenmayer if he wanted to try paddling an inflatable kayak he'd brought along. Weihenmayer jumped in and the two set off using the first in what would prove to be an ever-more-complex series of guidance systems: Taney's orange plastic rescue whistle.
Weihenmayer recalls it as love at first touch. "I loved being in my own boat," he says. "I loved being independent. And I loved the rapids just hitting you out of nowhere, as you blasted through those waves and reacted. I was a total novice. I didn't understand what made up rapids, how they worked; it was all so new."
Later, Weihenmayer asked Rob Raker, whom he'd met in 2000 at base camp on Antarctica's Mount Vinson, to teach him how to kayak. A seasoned paddler, Raker showed Weihenmayer some basics in a pool, then took him on a trip through a narrow canyon on Idaho's Green River called the Gates of Lodore, again leading Weihenmayer with a whistle and shouts. Around this time, former Olympic kayak coach Wiegand reached out. "I didn't even know he was kayaking," says Wiegand. "I just saw an article about him, saw him speak, and was like, 'This guy is incredible.' "
Wiegand joined Weihenmayer and Raker on a trip down a different section of the Green River, in Utah's Desolation Canyon, one of the most remote areas in the continental United States. In this forbidding environment, they first tried upgrading their guidance system with two-way radios.
Three years later, Weihenmayer sits beached by the Usumacinta in his sun-baked kayak, black wetsuit on, red helmet off, face lowered as if in prayer. Standing 15 feet away, Raker calls out, "Weihenmayer, can you hear me?"
Weihenmayer puts a hand to the earpiece of his black radio headset. "I can't hear a thing," he says. "Can you hear me?"
"No."
Raker looks at a black module on his waist. "Mine's blinking blue," he says. The team's tech specialist steps in. "You have to hold it down for, like, five seconds to shut it off," he says.
As Raker says "test-test-test" into his mic, Weihenmayer fiddles with the headset's Velcro strap. Finally Weihenmayer declares, "This thing sucks. Too floppy; throw it out – fuckin' Brits," miming a prima donna's disgusted toss, then softly answers Raker through his mic: "That's pretty clear."
Weihenmayer's jokes cover jagged nerves. Today's run will reunite him with one of the rapids that caused him a neurological collapse last year: La Cola Diablo, "the Devil's Tail," which contains a feature with the appropriately existential designation of a "hole." Unlike whirlpools – which merely flip you, spin you, and release you – holes don't let you go. They pull your boat down stern-first into their spinning maw, where it might end up for weeks with the trees, debris, and other kayaks spinning in its so-called grinder.
Weihenmayer says that when La Cola Diablo grabbed his boat, "I got frazzled and twitchy." And even when he got out of the boat, his body wouldn't calm. "It looked like a seizure," says Wiegand. "You get spasticity issues, and the whole nervous system starts overfiring. That's when it gets dangerous. If he were asked to walk a straight line at that point, he'd fall."
Weihenmayer has since gotten a better feel for the confounding behavior of whitewater, whose complex systems of fluid dynamics often make it seem like a living, breathing entity. For a blind person, this incredibly data-rich sonic world of a whirlpool can almost literally drown them in sound. In steep rock canyons, echoes turn a run down the rapids into a headlong sprint through a hall of mirrors and make sensory navigation a form of psyops torture. Though he's one sense short of a full five, Weihenmayer describes the effect as "sensory overload."
This afternoon, Weihenmayer has to push such memories aside as he paddles past the gorgeous Cascada Busiljá waterfalls, around a graceful bend, and toward the Usumacinta's first big water at La Cola Diablo. Here, two main currents meet and gush over a two-foot rock ledge, creating the giant swirling hole marked by two white flumes, which look like mortar bursts from a hundred yards away.Weihenmayer moves smoothly toward those white flumes and drives straight into a six-foot wave. His bow smartly salutes, and he sails into the Devil's Tail. This time, he hits the swirling hole and gives only one reflexive jerk, regaining control by giving in to the whirlpool's swirling circular motion like a driver turning into the skid of a hydroplaning car. He takes its current into his body, passes it along, rotates with and out of the hole – then speeds straight into the darkening water below.
Four or five kayakers encircle Weihenmayer's boat, all bearing smiles. Weihenmayer doesn't know exactly what he did differently. "It's not your conscious brain reacting," he says. "Last year, I know I was not reacting well, not leaning the right way. This time, I hit the wave and it . . . just worked. The whole thing is sort of in my fiber."
Hours later, at night, the crew gathers after dinner. The fire glows, the tequila flows, and talk turns to matters of the latrine. Each one is a connoisseur of the finer malarias, dry heaves, diarrheas, and parasites of the natural world. Taney describes a parasitic fluke he picked up in Africa and the damage done.
"When I got to the CDC, they wouldn't diagnose me because they said I hadn't 'properly preserved the specimen,' " he says.
Soon they're laughing over a boastful friend who guides expeditions on Kilimanjaro, and I blurt out, "He sounds like Commander McBragg," referencing an obscure, walrus-mustached, Kiplingesque character from the Underdog cartoon show. At the mention of the name, Weihenmayer goes into a fusty Victorian British accent.
"There I was. Surrounded by 10,000 Chinese. So I dove off the Great Wall of China, into the Sang Po. And I swam across, fighting the crocodiles, and found a giant piece of bamboo, which allowed me to pogo stick over the Great Wall into Tibet . . . where I was saved."
Weihenmayer, it turns out, watches television and movies, in a more expansive usage of the verb you quickly get used to. He liked Life of Pi, found Skyfall decent and Moonrise Kingdom overrated. Aided by his wife's running account of visual action, he takes in dialogue, performances, music, sound design, and narrative.
Weihenmayer caught his last few crucial glimpses of the visual world as he entered adolescence. The last TV show he ever saw, with one eye pressed against the screen, was a Real People episode on Canadian athlete Terry Fox, who lost a leg to cancer and, in the hospital, decided to run across his nation. "I'd never heard of an athlete with a disability doing something that just blew your mind so hard," says Weihenmayer. "Most people in that situation retreat; they go, 'Oh, my God, I just gotta survive.' Terry did the opposite – he attacked. I know I had him in mind when my dad asked if I wanted to do a program that taught blind kids to rock climb."Weihenmayer's loved ones often find watching what he does unbearable. "When we saw him climb McKinley, it was nauseating," says Ellie, who'd flown to Alaska to support him. "It's one thing to hear about it," she says. "But when I looked up to where he was, I wasn't looking high enough. I took a couple steps back, looked way up, and it was – it was hard to witness. With kayaking, it's the same thing. I can only hold my breath so long while he's under there."
Ellie would not enjoy the sight of Canyon San José, right near the end of our Usumacinta trip. Its jagged black limestone cliffs rise into the mist like the first appearance of Skull Island in King Kong, and mark the entrance to one of the trip's most fearsome rapids. Called La Linea – it's the line dividing Mexico from Guatemala – the rapid is filled with crisscrossing currents, scores of colliding eddies, and whirlpools that seem to pop from every spot.
At the foaming top of La Linea, Wiegand and Weihenmayer burst into view, coming down fast, with Raker right on their tail. Over the rapids' din, you can hear Raker yelling: "Forward! Forward!" Weihenmayer adjusts his course and drives on. His trip is far from smooth – a series of micro corrections that jitteringly execute Wiegand's commands and follow the line.
He does not cut a heroic figure in the kayak: hunched forward, eyes inert, head cocked, expression unlike his teammates' ESPN-ready, tendon-clenching squints. His face suggests the sublime concentration of someone tuning out deafening noise to take directions from some other, liminal source.
Farther downstream, past the boiling descent and unfathomable physics of La Linea, a wide green circle spreads out deep in the canyon's bend. Wiegand, Weihenmayer, and Raker slide into the pool like it's the hay-strewn landing of a carnival ride. Half their party is still upstream, helping an expert Mexican kayaker in the group who got rolled and was forced to swim by the same rapids Weihenmayer just navigated without sight.
Big E has many months of training before he navigates the Grand Canyon, and his skills and equilibrium will never improve enough for him to have the careless thrill sighted kayakers might enjoy. But Evans, who personally guided Weihenmayer to the top of the world in 2001, says strength, skill, and courage aren't the sole requirements for people like him and his teammates. "What we say is, 'You have to suffer well,' " says Evans. Weihenmayer has had more practice in this than most people ever will.
But that's clearly not what he's finding now on the Usumacinta, where whoops and laughter echo from deep at the base of black limestone cliffs.
Harlan Taney blasts into the eddy pool and swoops up to join Team Big E as it exults. "He nailed it!" yells Raker, his throaty voice echoing up the high rock walls. "That was beautiful!" calls Wiegand, joining the din.
Later, Weihenmayer will say, "I'm not trying to confront death. It's an awesome environment. There's a gift there. All the craziness and chaos and fear is what you have to fight through to get that gift." Now the cheering friends meet in the wide green eddy, and the four pull in tighter, kayaks nose to nose around Weihenmayer's center, the quartet slowly rotating in the green water, their faces beaming, the pitch and tone of their voices sounding jubilant.
But the rush of water is too loud for anyone but them to hear what they're saying.
Kayaking blind is just one of the adventures in Erik Weihenmayer’s new memoir, “No Barriers”
Erik Weihenmayer (right), who is blind, works his way through the rapids with the guidance of his friend, Chris Wiegand, during an afternoon paddle on Clear Creek on May 31, 2012 -- before he kayaked the Grand Canyon.
AAron Ontiveroz, Denver Post file photo
Erik Weihenmayer (right), who is blind, works his way through the rapids with the guidance of his friend, Chris Wiegand, during an afternoon paddle on Clear Creek on May 31, 2012 — before he kayaked the Grand Canyon.
By Jenn Fields | jfields@denverpost.com |
PUBLISHED: January 27, 2017 at 12:46 pm | UPDATED: January 27, 2017 at 5:03 pm
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When Erik Weihenmayer was on his way down Mount Everest, after becoming the first blind person to climb the world’s highest peak, his team leader said something that nudged him to do something even more outrageous — paddle the wild rapids of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.
That story is just one of many adventures on rivers and on mountains jam-packed into Weihenmayer’s latest book, “No Barriers: A Blind Man’s Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon.” (No Barriers is also the name of the organization he helped found to inspire people to break through their own barriers.)
Weihenmayer, who lives in Golden, took a brief break from skiing and ice climbing to talk about the book and breaking through his own fears to pilot a solo boat in the canyon.
"No Barriers: A Blind Man's Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon" is out on Feb. 7. Erik Weihenmayer will appear at the Tattered Cover on East Colfax to talk about the book on Feb. 4.
“No Barriers: A Blind Man’s Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon” is out on Feb. 7. Erik Weihenmayer will appear at the Tattered Cover on East Colfax to talk about the book on Feb. 4.
How does a man who is a self-proclaimed “mountain guy,” who “knew absolutely nothing about rivers,” as you say in the book, start dreaming about kayaking the Grand Canyon, anyway?
There were two things that were happening. One is that, when I’m coming down from Everest, and the team leader said, “Don’t make Everest the greatest thing you do.” Even though you’re completely wasted at the time, even though you did this big thing, it’s not over. I think a lot of people might fall into that trap — “Wow, I did something cool,” and then that thing gets further and further in the past. It was a good challenge for me. Where do you move, how do you go forward in your life?
It’s not just about doing scarier and riskier things, because that can put you on a trajectory, well a trajectory that can get you killed. How do you use those successes as a platform, a springboard to more and more successes in your life? For me, No Barriers is an organization, but the organization really supports the movement, which for me is the really exciting part. People with quote-unquote challenges, and figuring out how to be stronger together. … So I guess in a long-winded way, kayaking, that’s me trying to live what No Barriers means.
I’ve led all of these expeditions around the world since then — with soldiers and with disabled people and … it was a way for me to go through the process, to see if those things I really believed stood up in my own psyche.
Do they?
They do. They’re a lot messier and a lot more complicated than (what’s) in a book, though. There are a lot of loose ends. There’s a lot more fear and it’s bloodier.
One of the things that gets in the way of growth and change is the trauma you experience. A lot of the No Barriers community is these soldiers who have come back from these different conflicts and the trauma has gotten into their brains, this PTSD — they’re stalled out and in this dark place. And by no means do I want to (compare being in a war zone to kayaking), but kayaking blind, getting slammed face-first into rocks, pulling my skirt and swimming in Class IV rapids, it definitely showed me that if you’re in that process, you’re in that journey, it’s easy to get sidelined. It’s easy to get stuck from the paralysis and fear. So it was a fascinating process for me to just get a taste for of what it’s like to have that in your lives.
The other reason I picked up kayaking is because when you’re up on mountains and it’s cold, you start dreaming about other things.
You wanted to be warm?
Yeah, you want to be warm! Mountains are slow and methodical. You’re sort of trying to bring situations under control. Kayaking, you’re not on your own time, and that could be not the timing you want in your brain.
It was a great learning experience because, because of that, it’s not all about controlling the river. People tell me, “Oh you’ve conquered another mountain.” And I think, you’ve clearly not been in the mountains. You sneak to the top while the mountain blinks or takes a nap or something. You sneak to the top and plant your flag or whatever and then get out of there, because humans aren’t meant to be at 29,000 feet.
But rivers are so different, they’re so powerful … Kayaking was about letting go, and just trying to control making a fast move, getting into position, but then just riding the energy of the river.
I don’t want to give too much away to readers, but learning to become a whitewater kayaker seemed stressful and scary. You talk about being so nervous before you head into rapids that you’re about to throw up. What kept you going?
I think it was because I was committed to this process. I wanted to see it through. I know that just sounds arbitrary, but for me, I was committed to going through this process. I knew the thing that was going to sabotage me was my brain. So a lot of the process was trying to figure out, how do you discipline your mind, how do you not get stalled out by these things that happen to you, these fear responses.
My friend Rob Raker would say, “You just have to get back in the boat.” And you sometimes just physically can’t get back in the boat. …Sometimes there’s no way to move forward, sometimes the way to move forward is back. That’s why I had to go back to the (National) Whitewater Center. After I swam that rapid in the whitewater center … I had to learn to whitewater kayak all over again — I’d lost my roll, I’d lost my confidence. You have to go back and start over and rebuild the patterns in your brain.
Is kayaking way scarier than being in the Death Zone on Everest?
Yes, 100 percent. It was way scarier. I’m kind of slow, methodical, I’m cautious. Kayaking is so fast, there’s so many things happening and you have to respond to all of that. …Your brain is actually an impediment to the process.
The great foil of that was my buddy Lonnie Bedwell, who is all instinct! He’s the perfect kayaker, because he’s all instinct.
Every time you write about a No Barriers summit in the book, there’s a story where someone comes up to you and says, “I want to try this,” and it seems a little outrageous. You always seem to brainstorm a solution in the book, but I’m wondering if there were times when the team couldn’t figure out how to get it done.
One of the things we haven’t figured out (is how to help people after they get back home). We go on these amazing experiences, and people would go away with this high, they’d be out with this great team and have this amazing time. In that heroic journey, when you go home again, sometimes that’s when you go off the cliff.
A lot of organizations fall short in that, so we’ve tried to do that at No Barriers with a pledge, so when they finish, they make a pledge. That could last a year or more. And we’ve hired a social worker who is part of our team and who follows up with them, does support calls, connecting them to the right people, trying to be their rope team as they go forward.
At No Barriers, I think we haven’t done as much with folks in chairs. And I think folks in chairs get left out of a lot of adventures. So we’re trying to rally and do more there.
There are so many moments in the book in which you act as a counselor for someone who is having a difficult time on an expedition, and then Rob and Harlan are your counselors as you’re learning to kayak — Harlan seems like a river whisperer.
He’s a river yoda! All these folks, nobody’s immune from this No Barriers stuff. Harlan had this crazy experience as a kid with his dad’s death, and Rob is on top of the world and is just this amazing world-class athlete and gets his butt kicked with stage-four prostate cancer. I think everyone’s counseling everyone in a way. We’re like a like a little Oprah network.
Some readers might be surprised to find this extended section in the book about adopting your son right in the middle of all of these adventures. The adoption process seems like it was a big adventure in its own right.
That’s the crazy thing! You think kayaking and smashing into rocks and stuff is the big adventure in the book, but that turns out to be the shallowest part, because that was the adventure. Bringing Arjun home ended up being the biggest adventure that could happen.
What’s your next adventure?
Well, I want to keep growing No Barriers, obviously. We’re doing really well, but this idea of No Barriers, I think a lot of people need it. I think the country needs it right now. We’re so consumed by fear. It’s like we’re drowning in fear. And that makes sense: people are afraid, they’re afraid of terrorism, they’re afraid of Russia, they’re afraid of China, afraid of immigrants. That fear — eventually that fear will destroy us, it’ll bring us down. We’ve got to get back to just doing what we do: to break barriers, to innovate, to get hurt and shattered and then rebuild. So I think it’s a great message for our community — but also for every human being.
Erik Weihenmayer will be at the Tattered Cover, at 2526 East Colfax Ave., to talk about “No Barriers: A Blind Man’s Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon” on Feb. 4 at 7 p.m. Copies of the book will be available to those who attend at that time; the book will be available to the general public on Feb. 7. tatteredcover.com/new-event-calendar
HOMILETICS INTERVIEW: Erik Weihenmayer
On May 25, 2001, Erik Weihenmayer became the first blind man in history to reach the summit of the world's highest mountain Mount Everest. At the age of 32, Weihenmayer is on course to become one of the youngest people to climb all of the Seven Summits the highest peaks on each of the seven continents. He has already scaled Mt. McKinley in 1995, El Capitan in, 1996, Kilimanjaro in 1997, Argentina's Aconcagua in 1999 and Polar Circus in 2000, a 3,000-foot ice waterfall in Alberta.
A former middle-school teacher and wrestling coach, Erik is one of the most exciting and well-known athletes in the world. Despite losing his vision at the age of 13, Erik has become an accomplished mountain climber, sky-diver and skier. He has never let his blindness interfere with his passion for an exhilarating and fulfilling life.
In addition to being a world-class athlete, Erik is also the author of the book Touch the Top of the World. In this autobiographical work, Erik recalls his struggle to push past the limits of vision loss.
Erik's extraordinary accomplishments have gained him abundant press coverage including repeated visits to NBC's Today and segments on World News Tonight, the Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, MSNBC and Inside Edition to name a few. He has also been featured in Sports Illustrated and Men's Journal.
To learn more about Erik or to order his book, visit his Web site highsightspresentations.com.
Erik and his wife Ellie are the proud parents of 1-year-old Emma. We caught up with Erik taking a break from climbing and speaking engagements in the family room of his home in Golden, Colorado.
HOMILETICS: How do you answer the famous question that was asked of Mallory, "Why climb this mountain?" He replied, "Because it is there." What's your motivation?
WEIHENMAYER: There are two parts to that answer. One is that human beings love to achieve. Half the equation is "because it is there," but the other half is "because we are here." As human beings we like to stay on top of things; we're like army ants. We have an ambitious, exploring nature to our being. We want to learn and to know our world. That's good. Sometimes it makes us too aggressive, but if we can keep it in check, I think that's a good quality.
HOMILETICS: So what's so great about standing on a summit?
WEIHENMAYER: It's built into our genetic makeup. There's no difference between the summit and five feet below the summit. As human beings we want to stand on the very top. It's something about achievement. You want to get to the top of the mountain, but in a sense, it's not really a physical place because the top of a mountain is windy and cold and people talk about the great view from the summit, but there's not necessarily a great view. You're looking down into the clouds and snow, and so on. Sometimes, there's a nice view, but a summit is less of a physical place and more of a metaphor for the meaning of your life. You can make your life what you want it to be.
HOMILETICS: You say in your book that when you attempt to describe the feeling of standing on a summit, that there's no English word to describe the feeling.
WEIHENMAYER: People often talk about "conquering" a mountain. That's crazy. You never conquer a mountain. You may be standing on top of a mountain, but the mountain has sort of blinked and taken a nap for a moment and let you do it. You feel hungry and tired, and you feel like you need the warmth of friends and people around you. So it's a very vulnerable feeling, not a conquering feeling. I guess the top of the mountain, also, is just the goal. Once you get to the summit, it's pretty cool, but you're only there for like 15 minutes, and you're like "Wow, I can't believe I did this." You feel great, but you feel tired and want to get down.
HOMILETICS: And it can be dangerous to linger on the summit.
WEIHENMAYER: You don't want to hang out on the summit that long. People focus so much on the summit, and, yeah, that drives you to the mountain to get to the top but it's just a piece. And it's an important piece. I'm not knocking it. I'm not going to say, "I don't care if I summit or not." But it's just one piece. The doing is the fun part.
HOMILETICS: I get the feeling that sometimes you're mildly irritated at being described as being "amazing and inspirational." Do you get tired of trying to live up to that? Are there any times when you're totally not inspirational? Maybe I should talk to Ellie.
WEIHENMAYER: [laughs] Yeah, for sure. Sometimes after I do a talk for a group, someone comes up and says "I just want to touch someone who's been to the top. You're so inspirational." It's kind of hard, because you're just a normal guy. The other day I did a presentation, and I had a cold and was trying not to cough into the microphone. You're a human being, not an inspirational being. A lot of times that inspiration comes from people's low expectations. "Blind person gets across the street without getting whacked." "Blind person brushes his teeth." Wow! That's inspirational! I went on this TV show with this talk show host. And she was like "Oh, these inspirational blind people." Blind comedian, blind Kung Fu expert, blind climber. I felt so cheap. I felt like such a loser. It did the opposite. I guess climbing Mount Everest is inspirational, so I've gotten a bit more comfortable with it.
HOMILETICS: Explain what you mean by the "Even I" syndrome.
WEIHENMAYER: It's funny, because people will come up to me after a presentation, and they'll say, "Man, I think that's so incredible what you did. Even I with two perfectly working eyes couldn't make it up Everest." And I laugh, because here's a guy who lives in Orlando and smokes a pack of cigarettes a day. It's like, "Dude, do you think the difference between success and failure has to do with perfectly working eyes?" It's a compliment in their minds, so I take as that, and laugh. Two good eyes may be part of the equation, but there are so many other qualities that make a person successful, like the skill and talent you develop, the time you devote to it, and your persistence
HOMILETICS: And the fact that he has a beer belly and hasn't exercised in two years.
WEIHENMAYER: Yeah, you're 70 years old, you're in Orlando, you've never walked more than a mile in your life. What makes you think you could climb a mountain with perfectly working eyes? It goes well beyond that. They mean it as a compliment, and I accept their intent.
HOMILETICS: You talk about being on the face of the mountain, reaching out, scanning the void for a handhold, you're reaching out in fear, but that fear is moderated by hope.
WEIHENMAYER: It's my nature. I am super-scared about things when I first do something, but I push myself because I am excited and hopeful about the possibilities I might be able to achieve. I'm both scared and hopeful. It's like a knife edge. You walk this fine line between fear and hope, but the hope is just enough to keep me going. But sometimes I am definitely scared and I have to push through that fear, and sometimes that fear has the potential of being paralyzing, but
HOMILETICS: But hope melts that.
WEIHENMAYER: It melts it just enough. Rock climbing helps me to understand that a lot of life is just reaching out into the darkness. You don't know what is there. I'm reaching out, and I'm looking for that hold, and I know it's out there, and I don't have much time to find the hold, and I know I'm going to fall, my fingers are going to give out, but I'm hoping and I'm praying and I'm predicting I'm going to find what I'm looking for. But I understand that there are no guarantees. That's the kind of fear that is potentially paralyzing. [Ellen, Erik's wife, enters with Emma, their 1-year-old daughter. So Erik breaks to greet Ellen and play with Emma for a few minutes. We resume the conversation in an upstairs office.]
HOMILETICS: Some time ago, you decided there were some things you could not do, and those were the things you would let go of, but the things you could do, you would learn to do well. Is that still your philosophy?
WEIHENMAYER: It is. There are a couple different pieces to that. One is, that there is a super-blurry line between the things that you can't do and things that you can. You have to figure out creative ways to be a pioneer and cross that line. What a lot of people think is impossible for you, is not. It's a life-long process to try to figure that out. A lot of things you thought were impossible aren't. Some things are not possible. I don't drive a car down the highway. But just losing your eyes Ð you're not your eyes, you know.
HOMILETICS: You told Ellie you couldn't change diapers.
WEIHENMAYER: Oh yeah, you can use that blind thing to your advantage whenever you need to.
HOMILETICS: You also said that freedom "is not just the freedom to try something, but the freedom to fail."
WEIHENMAYER: Mountain climbing teaches you that you've got to bail quite a bit. Fifty percent of the time that I climb mountains, I fail. There are things that are bigger and more powerful than you and sometimes they control you. I was on Mt. Everest with Eric Alexander who probably had more faith than any of us on the team. He said a prayer when we were at base camp, and I just thought it was the coolest thing.
We were sitting around at base camp at this table at Easter (we had an Easter service), and he say something like: "Dear God, give us the strength and courage to stand on top of this mountain, to be safe, to make good decisions, to go home with our friendships intact and strengthened." And then he said something cool, he said: "But I know prayer is not necessarily a wish list. So if it isn't in your plan for us to stand on top, give us the wisdom to know what our destiny is."
It was like, "Wow! That's cool." It's true. What you want is not always what you get. Sometimes you just have to struggle when things didn't work out the way you wanted them to. You just have to accept it. That's the way mountain climbing is. Only 10 percent of the people who attempt Mt. Everest reach the summit. So if your expectation is to stand on top every time, you're just going to get hammered psychologically.
HOMILETICS: You describe your mother as someone who found the strength to "oppose the world." Sounds like you.
WEIHENMAYER: She was a mother lioness. She was stubborn. My dad's a bit stubborn, too, and he walks his talk, and when he believes in something, whether he's right or wrong, his actions match his words.
HOMILETICS: Your parents were remarkable. You describe your dad as a broom and your mom as a dustpan.
WEIHENMAYER: My dad was like a broom, pushing me out into the world and you shatter into a million pieces, and my mom would sweep me up and put me back together again, and then my dad would sweep me out again. And that was good. My mom was super-persistent. She didn't like to see me bleed when I was wrestling. Maybe that's harder for a mother. But she was definitely a fighter, although she had a vulnerable side, too. She was tough when she needed to be.
HOMILETICS: Have they made an impact on how you will approach parenting?
WEIHENMAYER: I think so. A lot of love and some discipline and so forth. But high expectations. Maybe that's the biggest part. I don't know how my parents knew to have super-high expectations. Not in an annoying yuppie way: "I want you to make straight A's and go to an Ivy League school." But, "I want you to live your life as fully as you can, because life is a gift and you have to live it with as much joy and fulfillment and accomplishment as you can." Don't settle. My dad never pushed me in terms of where to go to school or what to do for a living. It was hard sometimes; it's easier when there is someone to tell you what to do.
HOMILETICS: When you were climbing Everest, was there ever a point when you thought you weren't going to make it?
WEIHENMAYER: Yeah, about 15-20 times a day. There's a section called the Khumbu Ice Fall. The glacier's running down the mountain, and it reaches a cliff and it kind of funnels in and kind of shoots out over this cliff and collapses under its own weight and sort of explodes down the mountain, flows down the mountain like a river of ice, collapsing, cracking. Kind of does it in slow motion, but fast by mountain standards, perhaps one or two feet a day. So there are big sections that collapse underneath you, crevasses that are opening up. It's super-jumbled up. You're jumping from ice boulder to ice boulder, jumping over crevasses, crossing ladders over crevasses, sometimes there are five ladders tied together swinging in the wind and you're trying to walk over them. It's just a tough place psychologically, too, because you know you can't make a mistake.
HOMILETICS: Even if I had two perfectly good eyes, I wouldn't want to try that!
WEIHENMAYER: [laughs] Most people wouldn't want to. Sighted people hate the Khumbu Ice Fall. They're terrified. They're looking up at the these huge ice walls hanging over their heads. I can hear them. The first time I went through there, I mean it took me 13 hours. Super hard. Hardest day of my life for sure. I came into Camp One trashed, bloody nose because I'd bashed my nose against a block of ice. I was green, and nauseated. Someone said I looked like I'd gone 10 rounds with Mike Tyson. I was definitely sort of blown away, because I knew you had to cross the Ice Fall 10 times to get to the top of Everest because you have to get acclimatized and you have to shuttle loads up the mountain. So I was super-down. I couldn't imagine going through that experience again.
No matter how big the mountain is, it is climbed step by step, moment by moment. If you can relax and let go. You're not just going through the motions. You're aware of every moment. You're excited. You're celebrating every moment. At the end of every day I would celebrate. I told myself that no matter how high I make it up the mountain, I have to celebrate that as my summit, and that has to be success. And when I did that, it was a turning point.
HOMILETICS: Were you surprised at all the media attention when you got back? Time magazine, the White House, television interviews?
WEIHENMAYER: It was overwhelming, like getting shot out of a cannon. But it made me proud, because it was something that the world connected to, obviously. So many people thought that this isn't something that is in our field of understanding, like the Jamaican bobsled team. It was so beyond most people's radar, that when it happened it was like people were saying, "Wow, that just completely shattered my perceptions of what is possible and what is not." And that's cool, because that creates more opportunity for people who come down the road. When people are less judgmental and more open-minded and accept more possibilities that's always a good thing for society.
HOMILETICS: You seem not to mind being referred to as "the blind guy." And yet some people also seem to be sensitive about their disabilities.
WEIHENMAYER: It's funny. Most people's intentions are good. They don't know how to proceed or what to say. So it's funny when people say to me, "What's it like to be a person of sightlessness?" They're scared to use the word "blind." Or they're scared to use the word "see." I was in a cab yesterday, coming home from somewhere, and the driver kept saying "a person in your situation." It was so funny. They think "blind" is a dirty word.
I've moved beyond that. It's a matter of semantics. It's the intention behind the word. I don't think "blind" is a bad word, and I don't think being blind is a bad thing, or something to be embarrassed about. I've accepted it. I don't live in the past and worry about what life could've been as a sighted person. It's what it is and you make the best out of what is. Blindness is unusual and unique, so my friends connect with it, and relate to it, and a lot of friends will poke fun at me, so they make blind jokes, and it's funny, and I laugh at it because I know the intention is good. I don't get wrapped up in political correctness.
HOMILETICS: After your mother died, you got help from a pastor down in Florida. How did he help you, and what advice would you give pastors who counsel people in crisis.
WEIHENMAYER: Man, I just think that would be such a hard job, because I'm such a hard core person
HOMILETICS: What was it about that pastor that connected with you?
WEIHENMAYER: When you're hurting, you're in a narrow frame of mind. And he helped me to open up the world a little bit, open up to other possibilities. That's all he really could do. He couldn't tell me what to do or what to think. He could only open my mind, expand my mind beyond what I was seeing in my limited frame of mind at that point. He just opened me up and said, "You know, think about this. You don't need your mom when you're experiencing success, but when you're hurting and sad, that's when you can turn to the power and spirit of loved ones who have passed away, she's there. Think about her when you're sad, and get strength from her." And that's what I did.
HOMILETICS: When you lost your mom, your view of God took on for a while anyway, understandably a harsher cast. You felt like Job in the Bible, unfairly afflicted by so many things. Has your view stayed the same? Softened? Been modified over the years since she's been gone?
WEIHENMAYER: I'm still a searcher. But I went off to summer camp at this blind school, and met this girl I had a crush on, and experienced so much fun, and found rock climbing, me connecting with the rock, with the texture and pattern of the rocks, and getting up high I could hear this beautiful sound of the open space around me sound vibrations are actually moving around all the time bouncing off of things, and you can kind of get this impression of the world through your ears, like radar or something and I felt so connected, so psyched that blindness hadn't thwarted it or screwed it up in any way, even though it made it harder, it still didn't take away the possibility of it, and I remember thinking that life is kind of weird, because you think it's just a lot of loss, but although you've lost something, either you fill in the void with bitterness or you fill it with something positive. That's what I did. You lose some things, you gain some things. God closes a door, but opens a window. It's really true.
HOMILETICS: It didn't seem that way, though, that summer after you graduated from Boston College, and before starting your work on a master's degree when you thought you'd get a job. Any job.
WEIHENMAYER: I met a lot of barriers. I had never run into that really. I was sort of insulated. At Boston College they were there to help me, and my family.
HOMILETICS: The biggest barrier wasn't your blindness.
WEIHENMAYER: Not from my perspective. I learned there are doors that people close in your face ... ceilings out there ... people's perception about blindness. It was a hard realization to hit this wall and know there was no way through this. I wanted so bad to bash my head through those barriers. I never got a job that summer. I remember I was going to get this hotel job. I went out and got this credit card machine that talks, but the lady hired her 16-year-old niece instead. It was such a harsh lesson. People thought I couldn't wash dishes at a restaurant. I still don't know if I could wash dishes at a restaurant. But I tend to think I could've figured out a way to be a good dishwasher. They never let me have the chance.
HOMILETICS: So people's perceptions of you are a greater limiting factor than your blindness.
WEIHENMAYER: Exactly. A lot of times that's true. Maybe that's why these climbs are so good for society, too, because it takes people's perceptions and shatters them. I think that's cool, to tweak people's sensibilities.
HOMILETICS: Being blind doesn't exempt you from leading some of the pitches while climbing. What has climbing taught you about leadership?
WEIHENMAYER: Once and this really annoys my friend Jeff we were climbing on El Capitan and I was leading a pitch, and he forgot his headlamp. It was after dark, and we needed to get out of there, and I led him down the trail and I told him, "Jeff, I've saved your life about five times now." And I say it in front of his girlfriend and stuff. To be leader, you don't have to be the fastest, smartest; you need skill and courage and a vision of your life, an understanding that life is an ongoing process of reaching out to the unknown, and even though you're afraid, you have to do it anyway. And that's all leadership is all about. Because it doesn't come naturally to anyone, I don't think. Some people have just grown comfortable with the discomfort of it.
HOMILETICS: You're a father now. Does that make you more hesitant to pursue this death-wish lifestyle you have?
WEIHENMAYER: I told myself it wouldn't change me. I'm not a blind Evil Knievel. I don't take crazy risks. I take calculated risks. I'm more of a thinker. I look at something that seems impossible and I figure out a system to do it. And it seems crazy on the surface, but if you look at the details, the time, the skill and all the work I've done to make it safe as I can, you say, "Okay, that's pretty reasonable." Like, we're going to try to ski down Mt. Elbrus this June, which is the highest peak in Europe. I've got a system for skiing that's pretty safe. Sky-diving is the same way. I've sky-dived solo maybe 40 times. I've got systems that make me as safe as anyone else. But, saying all that, being a parent definitely changes your perspective, no matter whether you like it or not. You don't want to go away as much. You get a notch more conservative.
HOMILETICS: What would you like the crowning achievement of your life to be?
WEIHENMAYER: This sounds corny and maybe it's unrealistic and maybe it's not even true. I have experienced a lot of physical things that I'm proud of. But I would like to die someday thinking that Ellen's saying, "He was a good husband. He loved us fully and gave us as much as he could." I truly do believe that. I have had these mountain-climbing goals, and everyone in the world seems so excited about that, and I am, too, but the other stuff is what I am finding more important these days.
HOMILETICS: Would life be easier if you weren't blind?
WEIHENMAYER: It would be easier, but not more satisfying.
Weihenmayer, Erik: NO BARRIERS
(Dec. 15, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Weihenmayer, Erik NO BARRIERS Dunne/St. Martin's (Adult Nonfiction) $26.99 2, 7 ISBN: 978-1-250-08878-9
The first blind man to climb Mount Everest narrates his kayaking descent of 300 miles of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. On one level, this is a tale of grit, determination, courage, and overcoming tremendous odds. With co-author Levy, Weihenmayer (The Adversity Advantage: Turning Everyday Struggles Into Greatness, 2007, etc.) presents an exhilarating adventure story of arduous mountain climbing and whitewater kayaking, but he also offers broader life lessons. Over the course of eight years, the author organized his kayaking team as a byproduct of helping others, including blind orphans in Tibet and Nepal, blind teenagers in America, and veterans of our recent wars recovering from physical and mental wounds. Among them was Kyle, an amputee who pledged to scatter a fallen comrade's ashes from the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, and a shy blind kid named Joey, who had never peeled an orange. Weihenmayer's organization No Barriers is intended to address those in need in many different ways. For one, the author works intensively with youth. "For blind kids to succeed," he writes, "they don't just need other blind people. They'll need to work with seeing people to harness those abilities and learn to thrive in the sighted world." Weihenmayer elaborates on the skills required to achieve significant goals, including finding the right people, technologies, and methods necessary to accomplish these goals. It took a team of 10 to help the author make his descent down the Colorado, and the stories of the team members, some of whom had been with the author through many adventures, add to the narrative. Together, they developed a plan of attack for each of the rapids and unique communication and power supply methods, and they were backed by a logistics operation moving tons of equipment. Ultimately, in this highly inspirational tale, the Grand Canyon, like Everest and other summits, becomes a metaphor for life: "physical, mental, and psychological and...never ending." A wonderful tribute to the greatness of the human spirit.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Weihenmayer, Erik: NO BARRIERS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Dec. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA473652190&it=r&asid=eafcffb1909435d5da4ac30db2fbc039. Accessed 2 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A473652190
No Barriers: A Blind Man's Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon
Brenda Barrera
113.7 (Dec. 1, 2016): p10.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
No Barriers: A Blind Man's Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon. By Erik Weihenmayer and Buddy Levy. Feb. 2017. 368p. illus. St. Martin's/Thomas Dunne, $26.99 (9781250088789); e-book, $12.99 (9781250088802).
How do you top the challenge of climbing Mt. Everest, let alone the Seven Summits? Weihenmayer lost his sight at the age of 13 from retinoschisis and chronicled his journey as the first blind person to summit Mt. Everest in Touch the Top of the World (2001). He continues to motivate people of all ages worldwide, from amputees to veterans, to challenge their perceived limitations. Here he describes how he took on the daunting challenge of kayaking the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, chronicling a grueling journey navigating eddies and rapids while paying homage to the complexity of families and bonds of friendship forged through shared experiences. In addition to tracking the kayak trip, the author also offers a poignant account of adopting his son from Nepal and details fascinating medical advances concerning neuroplasticity, the brain's capacity to change. More than a story about a blind man converting the improbable to the possible, this volume provides a powerful testament to the human spirit, concluding with a challenge to readers to take the Pledge of No Barriers. Guaranteed to inspire.--Brenda Barrera
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Barrera, Brenda. "No Barriers: A Blind Man's Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon." Booklist, 1 Dec. 2016, p. 10. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA474716625&it=r&asid=f6ce081cfe4785c35216a782e188750a. Accessed 2 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A474716625
No Barriers: A Blind Man's Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon
263.37 (Sept. 12, 2016): p43.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
No Barriers: A Blind Man's Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon
Erik Weihenmayer and Buddy Levy. St. Martin's/Dunne, $26.99 (368p) ISBN 978-1-250-08878-9
Named after Weihenmayer's support organization, this memoir reads like an extension of its mission statement, right down to the concluding "No Barriers Pledges." After Weihenmayer (Touch the Top of the World), a blind adventurist, scales Mt. Everest, his expedition leader advises him not to let that be "the greatest thing you ever do." Weihenmayer, an American, takes the advice, leading blind Tibetan children and veterans on climbs and conducting countless other courageous feats. Spinning minutia as intimacy is an unexpected, unpleasant wrinkle. The book is part Facebook post ("The journey began to take on a metaphorical meaning") and part resume, detailing Weihenmayer's personal and professional travails en route to the goal mentioned in the title. Weihenmayer's inability to pare down the selection of anecdotes--all covered in CEO life lesson-speak or ponderous dialogue straight from gift-store inspirational storybooks ("In your talk, Erik, I remember you referring to an internal light that exists in people")--makes it impossible to care. This is heroism as a reference book. The amount of material is so mind-numbing and the diversions from the ultimate goal are so numerous that the only thing readers will be amazed by is that Weihenmayer's accomplishments manage to be boring. Two 16-page color photo inserts. (Feb. 2017)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"No Barriers: A Blind Man's Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon." Publishers Weekly, 12 Sept. 2016, p. 43. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA464046274&it=r&asid=a992bc462b4853c495183a255ddd8397. Accessed 2 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A464046274
TOUCH THE TOP OF THE WORLD
Jon Tinker
73.9 (Sept. 2001): p83.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2001 Circle Publishing Ltd.
http://www.geographical.co.uk/
TOUCH THE TOP OF THE WORLD by Erik Weihenmayer, (Hodder & Stoughton, hb, pp304, 14.99 [pounds sterling])
Erik Weihenmayer hit the headlines this spring when he became the first blind person to reach the summit of Everest. Touch the Top of the World is his story before Everest.
Born to a comfortably-off American family, Weihenmayer suffered from a degenerative eye disease and became blind at high school. Half of the book is about his battle to deal with his disability and to be accepted by his peers. His desire for independence is overwhelming, and it is a mark of the man that initially he only accepts having a guide dog because it is a `chick magnet'.
For me this is the much more interesting part of the book than the second part where he climbs Denali, El Capitan, Aconcagua and other mountains, perhaps better read as an exercise in determination and teamwork, although the story he tells is extraordinary.
Tinker, Jon
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Tinker, Jon. "TOUCH THE TOP OF THE WORLD." Geographical, Sept. 2001, p. 83. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA78030302&it=r&asid=617ee5d141d4b565c9b8f16684c1fe91. Accessed 2 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A78030302
Touch the Top of the World: A Blind Man's Journey To Climb Farther Than the Eye Can See
Janet Ross
126.3 (Feb. 15, 2001): p178.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2001 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Weihenmayer, Erik. Touch the Top of the World: A Blind Man's Journey To Climb Farther Than the Eye Can See. Dutton. Feb. 2001. c.320p. permanent paper. photogs. LC 00-047618. ISBN 0-525-94578-4. $23.95. TRAV
Weihenmayer is an extraordinary individual, adventurer, and athlete. On their own, his exploits as a mountain climber would be sufficient material for an exciting book, but there's an additional element--Weihenmayer is blind. He began to lose his sight as a child, owing to a degenerative eye disorder, and was totally blind by his teens. Added to this trauma was the death of his mother in an automobile accident. The onset of blindness and the loss of a beloved parent might have destroyed a less resilient individual, but Weihenmayer has been able to turn his frustrations and fears into positive accomplishments. He has scaled the 3000' wall of El Capitan in Yosemite, made it to the top of Argentina's Aconcagua, climbed the vertical ice wall of Alberta, Canada's Polar Circus, and plans an ascent of Mt. Everest in March 2001. Oh, yes, he also married his longtime sweetheart on the Shira Plateau of Mt. Kilimanjaro (which he summited) in 1997 and became the father of a daughter in 2000. Weihenmayer recounts all of these climbing experiences as well as his childhood struggle to deal with the onset of blindness and his efforts to obtain employment. This inspirational story is highly recommended for all public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/00.]
--Janet Ross, Sparks Branch Lib., NV
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Ross, Janet. "Touch the Top of the World: A Blind Man's Journey To Climb Farther Than the Eye Can See." Library Journal, 15 Feb. 2001, p. 178. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA71251399&it=r&asid=163286c0ad76b62305ba184cfd733258. Accessed 2 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A71251399
Touch the Top of the World: A Blind Man's Journey to Climb Farther than the Eye Can See
David Pitt
97.11 (Feb. 1, 2001): p1033.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2001 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Weihenmayer, Erik. Touch the Top of the World: A Blind Man's Journey to Climb Farther than the Eye Can See. Feb. 2001. 320p. illus. Dutton, $23.95 (0-525-94578-4). 796.52.
Here's an exciting, one-of-a-kind memoir that should appeal to lovers of man-against-nature adventure stories. The author has jumped from airplanes, bicycled distances that tested the limits of his endurance, run a marathon, and scaled some of the world's highest peaks. As if that weren't enough, he has been blind since he was a teenager. To reach the summit of Mount McKinley or El Capitan is achievement enough; it seems almost inconceivable that a blind man could do so. But the author is clearly a remarkable man, and he makes us believe that we, too, can do the virtually impossible, if we're determined enough. He looks back on his life, on his struggle to do what most of us could not summon the bravery to attempt, and we cannot help but admire him. He never presents himself as a hero, but his accomplishments speak for themselves. The word inspiring is used far too often in book reviews, but here is one case where it really is appropriate.
YA: For all teens who read true-life adventure tales. BO.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Pitt, David. "Touch the Top of the World: A Blind Man's Journey to Climb Farther than the Eye Can See." Booklist, 1 Feb. 2001, p. 1033. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA70637661&it=r&asid=9a5d690d7bd5c844da265d0f2baa5e53. Accessed 2 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A70637661
TOUCH THE TOP OF THE WORLD: A Blind Man's Journey to Climb Farther Than the Eye Can See
249.2 (Jan. 8, 2001): p62.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2001 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
ERIK WEIHENMAYER. Dutton, $23.95 (320p) ISBN 0-525-94578-4
In this moving and adventure-packed memoir, Weihenmayer begins with his gradual loss of sight as a very young child. By the time he became fully blind in high school, he had already developed the traits that would carry him to the summits of some of the world's highest mountains as well as onto the frequently hazardous slopes of daily life: charm, resilience, a sense of humor, a love of danger and a concern for others. His eloquent memoir exhibits all these traits. Weihenmayer--a thrill seeker who skydives, climbs mountains and skis--devotes the first half of the book to his adolescence, punctuated by his loss of sight, his mother's sudden death and his diligent efforts not only to pick up girls, but first to figure out which ones were attractive. With its many tales of pranks, adventures and the talents of his guide dog, this half alone is worth the price of admission. He goes on to chronicle his young adulthood, including his teaching career and his passion for climbing, seeded during a month-long skills c amp for blind adolescents and blossoming on his harrowing ascent of Mount McKinley. He describes fearsome ascents of Kilimanjaro--with his fiancee, so they can be married near the crater summit--El Capitan and Aconcagna's Polish Glacier. Weihenmayer tells his extraordinary story with humor, honesty and vivid detail, and his fortitude and enthusiasm are deeply inspiring. With the insightful intimacy of Tom Sullivan's classic If You Could See What I Hear and the intensity of the best adventure narratives, Weihenmayer's story will appeal to a broad audience. (Feb. 14)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"TOUCH THE TOP OF THE WORLD: A Blind Man's Journey to Climb Farther Than the Eye Can See." Publishers Weekly, 8 Jan. 2001, p. 62. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA69240322&it=r&asid=1ad371e0fcc339ba4e4d13b2fbf25ae0. Accessed 2 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A69240322
Touch the Top of the World
Edna M. Boardman
36.5 (Sept. 2002): p62.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2002 Kliatt
http://hometown.aol.com/kliatt/
Erik Weihenmayer. 2001/2002. Read by Nick Sullivan. Abridged. 4 tapes. 6 hrs. Audio Partners. 1-57270-274-5. $24.95. Cardboard; author, content, reader notes. SA
Weihenmayer tells the story of his frustration when a degenerative condition makes him totally blind by his freshman year in high school. He grudgingly accepts the help he must have but determines not to permit blindness to limit what he can accomplish in life. He becomes a teacher of English (his young students prove to be creative problem solvers), courts and marries attractive Ellie, and decides, after he enjoys climbing lesser mountains, to attempt the highest, most difficult climbs. Encouraged by his brothers, his father, and Ellie, he gains financing from a group that promotes normalization of blind persons and enlists the assistance of experienced fellow climbers. Mountain climbing for even the fit and sighted, he knows, is a daunting challenge.
Weihenmayer allows readers entree into his doubts and deepest feelings as he draws them into the tricky maneuvers, the physical shocks, and the thrills of climbs that include Mt. McKinley, Mt. Kilimanjaro, and Mt. Everest. Blindness is always present, but the climbing episodes are so well told that lovers of action/adventure as well as those who seek stories of success over handicaps will enjoy them. Sullivan voices in an exaggerated manner but reads with energy and affection for Weihenmayer. Edna M. Boardman, Bisrnark, ND
Boardman, Edna M.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Boardman, Edna M. "Touch the Top of the World." Kliatt, Sept. 2002, p. 62. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA107202629&it=r&asid=d23e716a48a8701f1058733089fa1f62. Accessed 2 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A107202629