An American who has climbed mountains around the world despite losing his sight at the age of 13 set out today to achieve his ultimate goal: becoming the first blind person to reach the summit of Everest.
Unlike most mountaineers who carefully coordinate their eyes, hands and feet as they climb, Erik Weihenmeyer, 32, will follow the sounds of bells tied to the jackets of his 12 teammates and their Sherpa guides, all of whom can see.
"Because Everest is so famous and you read and hear so much about it, I wanted to try it out," Weihenmeyer said, before he and the other mountaineers from the National Federation of Blind Allegro Everest Expedition boarded a helicopter and left Kathmandu for the mountain. "I have developed skills with my hands that most people have using their eyes, and I always climb with strong people," Weihenmeyer, of Golden, Colorado, said.
The Ministry of Tourism in Kathmandu said he will be the first blind person even to attempt to climb Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain, which stands 8,850m tall on the border of Nepal and Tibet. A big challenge will be the Khumbu icefall, where climbers use aluminium ladders and ropes as a bridge to cross the crevass. A slip would mean almost certain death on hitting the bottom or the razor-sharp ice that edges the crevasses. Like many other climbers, he will avoid unnecessary risks at the higher points by using bottled oxygen to supplement his breathing.
At the age of 13, Weihenmeyer lost his sight through a degenerative eye disorder. Three years later, he took up rock climbing. Since then he has climbed 6,150m Mount McKinley in Alaska, the 6,900m Mount Aconcagua in Argentina (believed to be the highest peak outside Asia) and the 5,860m Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa. He got married on top of the 3,940m Shira Plateau on his way to the Kilimanjaro summit two years ago, and he and his wife now have a nine-month-old daughter, Emma.
Weihenmeyer and his mountaineering friends have been preparing for their current adventure for the past three years by practicing on smaller mountains to familiarize themselves with the cold, high altitude and rarefied atmosphere of Everest. In January, he scaled Polar Circus, the 900m vertical ice wall in Alberta, Canada, and last year, the team failed to reach the summit of the 6,812m Mount Ama Dablam in Nepal. Deteriorating weather and food shortages forced the climbers to retreat from a height of 6,000m after spending eight days waiting for the weather to clear.
This time, the team will land at Lukla, a dirt airstrip in the foothills of Everest, and trek for nine days to the base camp at 5,300m. There, the climbers will stay for at least three days to acclimatize themselves. They hope to reach the summit in mid-May, when the weather is favorable. The popular spring climbing season in Nepal ends on May 31, when the monsoon dumps snow on the mountain, making such efforts difficult.
Since the first recorded conquest of Everest in 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, more than 800 people have reached the tallest peak. About 180 people have died on its unpredictable slopes. Despite that death toll, Weihenmeyer is optimistic. "I feel lucky this time," he said.
