A Brief History
On May 25, 2001, American mountain climber, adventurer, author, and speaker, Erik Weihenmayer, became the first blind person to reach the top of Mt. Everest in Nepal. A year later, he added to his collection of fantastic feats by becoming the 150th person to scale each of the “Seven Summits,” the tallest mountain on each of the continents.
Digging Deeper
Weihenmayer suffered from a degenerative eye disease as a child, resulting in his vision loss by his teen years. A high school wrestler, he also began rock climbing, graduated from Boston College, and became a teacher while also coaching middle school wrestling.
At the age of 27, he scaled Mt. Denali and went on to climbing greatness with his later ascents. Not content with mountain glory, he also took up kayaking, writing, motivational speaking, and creation of the Adventure Team Challenge for athletes without regard to disabilities.
We salute Erik Weihenmayer and all worthy adventurers!
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Weihenmayer, Erik, and Buddy Levy. No Barriers (The Young Adult Adaptation): A Blind Man’s Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon. St. Martin’s Griffin, 2019.
Weihenmayer, Erik. Touch the Top of the World: A Blind Man’s Journey to Climb Farther Than the Eye Can See. Blackstone Audio, Inc., 2002.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Conkoch of Erik Weihenmayer, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
