Dear Friends and Family,
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Erik
Weihenmayer
Photo: Didrik Johnck |
I’m home now enjoying some time with the family after completing my seventh
summit, Mt. Kosciusko, tallest peak in Australia. My quest to climb the Seven Summits has
taken me seven years, starting with Mt. McKinley in 1995. We reached the top of McKinley
on June 27, 1995; ironically, it was Helen Keller’s birthday. Carrying my 50-pound
pack and dragging my 50-pound sled, I remember thinking this is the hardest thing I could
possibly imagine doing, but, with the crunch of the snow under my feet, feeling the slow
steady rhythm of my body pushing up the slope, surrounded by my best friends, I
couldn’t imagine doing anything else with my life but climbing mountains.
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Nepal, Mt.
Everest, NFB 2001 Everest Expdition climbing team makes their way across a rickety bridge
suspended high above the Dudh Kosi River enroute to Base Camp. Ama Dablam looms in the
background.
Photo: Didrik Johnck |
So I proceeded step by step. In 1997, I climbed Kilimanjaro
and got married to my beautiful wife, Ellie, half way up the mountain on the Shira
Plateau. It took me two tries to get to the summit of Aconcagua, tallest peak in South
America. On my first attempt, we were turned back at 21,000ft by gale-force winds.
In the winter of 2000, my friend, Chris Morris, and I, after waiting out bad weather for
ten days, reached the top of Antarctica’s Mt. Vinson on a beautiful 50 degrees below
zero day. Then there was Everest, by far the hardest of the seven. Two and a half months
of work, much of it above 20,000ft, and years of dreaming and planning. On May 24th of
2001, 19 members of my team reached the top of Mt. Everest, a world record, and the most
from one team to reach the top of Everest in a single day. Last June, we climbed Mt.
Elbrus, tallest peak in Europe, and rewarded ourselves with a fantastic 10,000ft ski
descent, compliments of my ski guide, Eric Alexander. And just last week we drank
champagne in a total whiteout on the top of Australia’s Kosciusko with 60 mph
winds knocking us around. I wouldn’t have had it any other way; the mountains put up
a fight right to the end.
I climb mountains for reasons of joy and friendship, beauty and
accomplishment, but on a larger scale, the image of a blind person standing atop the Seven
Summits is so unexpected, I think it forces people to re-examine their perceptions about
what is possible, and perhaps ultimately awakens the possibilities in their own lives.
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Nepal, Mt.
Everest, Erik Weihenmayer ascending through the Khumbu Icefall en route to Camp 1. Erik
summitted Mt. Everest on May 25, 2001 as part of the NFB 2001 Everest Expedition.
Photo: Didrik Johnck |
But enough about past exploits. At age 33, I’m not
satisfied to look backwards. I have a tick-list a mile long, enough adventures to fill a
thousand lifetimes: big walls in the Yukon, ice faces in Alaska, first ascents in Tibet,
and my new sport, para-gliding: an easy way for broken-down climbers to descend in a
hurry. In December, my family and I have been invited by the Royal New
Zealand Foundation for the Blind to tour the country, to meet Sir Edmund Hillary, and
to climb Mt. Cook; and in February, if the political climate is right, we’re heading
to West Papua to climb Carstensz Pyramid, sponsored by National Geographic Explorer.
Standing in the pounding wind on top of Kosciusko, I realized that,
for me, the meaning of the Seven Summits isn’t as much about the finishing, but about
the doing. As I wrote in my autobiography, Touch the Top of the World, "Why
did people, including myself, envision a mountain as only a summit. It was like looking at
an iceberg and only recognizing the part above the water. I thought about all the
wonderful moments I had experienced on mountains: hiking with my brothers in the highlands
of Irian Jaya, playing baseball with ski poles and snow balls on Denali. And holding hands
with Ellie atop the Praying Monk. These moments seemed frozen in time, and I could bring
them up to the surface whenever I wanted. They were like snap shots, defining the essence
of who I was, what I wanted, whom I loved. Maybe, the real beauty of life happened on the
side of the mountain, not the top."
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Erik
Weihenmayer (center) and members of the Allegra-NFB 2002 Elbrus Expedition Team summit Mt.
Elbrus in Russia.
Photo: Didrik Johnck |
Thanks for your prayers and support over the years.
Climb high,
Erik Weihenmayer
Editor's postscript: To stay
informed of future climbs and presentations, you can visit Erik's website at, www.touchthetop.com I also highly recommend
this story and accompanying photo gallery at http://climb.mountainzone.com
In June of 1999, Incredible People had the
pleasure to talk with and subsequently write about a remarkable young man who was turning
the rock and mountain climbing world on its ear, in a story entitled