Touch the Top of the World

Erik Weihenmayer

"This guy is amazing! I saw him on the TV this morning and decide to do some digging and wow, he did things that normal able bodied couldn't do. Okay, we are mere mortals, maybe he is not. Looking at some of its feat rather put myself to shame. The world have no limit if you put your mind to it. Nothing is to difficult, just a matter of time and distance. Sometime i look at myself and some of those folks around me...just one word - pathetic". Kops21

Mount Everest

On May 25th 2001, Erik and his team of trusted friends stood on top of the world, a feat that many critics thought impossible. The team achieved one of history's most successful Everest climbs, setting five world records:

*The only blind person to summit
*The most from one team to stand on top in a single day (19 out of 21)
*The first American Father/Son duo to summit - (Sherm and Brad Bull)
*The oldest man to summit at age 64, Sherm Bull (his record was eventually broken)
*first High Definition footage shot on the summitThe documentary of the climb, Farther Than the Eye Can See, has now won 17 international film festival awards and was nominated for two Emmy's. (link to Michael's site) A cover story in Time Magazine said, "There is no way to put what Erik has done in perspective because no one has ever done anything like it. It is a unique achievement, one that in the truest sense pushes the limits of what man is capable of."

The Seven Summit

Erik's quest to climb the seven summits began on June 27th, 1995 when he reached the 20,300 foot summit of North America's Highest Peak - Denali, in Alaska. He next climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro where he married his longtime sweetheart, Ellie, on the Shira plateau at 13,000 feet. Recently, he led a second expedition to Kilimanjaro where five blind climbers from four continents reached the top. Among the team was Douglas Sidialo, who lost his sight in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombing in Nairobi, and became the first blind African to stand on the roof of the continent. Erik has also been twice to South America's 22,800 foot Aconcagua, the first try falling 1500 feet short of the summit where they were turned back by Gail force winds. Europe's 18,500 foot Mt. Elbrus provided an added challenge for Erik, since he skied down from the summit with his ski guide, Eric Alexander, 10,000 feet from summit to base camp. He finishhed his quest on Australia's Mt. Kosciusko on September 25, 2002. Ironically, the wind speed on Koscuisko's summit was the highest of the seven. "It was almost impossible to drink the champaign we had brought to celebrate." Said Erik.

Advenutre Racing

In September 2003, Erik and his Mt. Everest team mate, Jeff Evans, tried their hands at the sport of adventure racing. Joining forces with two experienced racers, Rob Harsh and Cammy Ronchetto, they took part in a five-day race across Amasolik Island in Greenland, which led them to the ultimate prize, Primal Quest, refered to many as the toughest multi-sport endurance race in the world - 9 days, 460 miles, 60,000 feet of elevation gain, no time outs. The disciplines included, kyaking, mountain biking, , rock climbing, running, whitewater rafting, orienteering, and caving. Team No Boundaries became one of 42 teams to cross the finish line out of the 80 Elite teams from around the world which started the race.

Climbing Blind - Tibet

Two years after Erik's Mt. Everest expedition, he received a very compelling letter from Sabriye Tenberken, an extraordinary blind German woman who had begun a school and training center for blind children in Lhasa, Tibet. Her note described that in Tibet, blindness is seen as a punishment for something a person has done bad in a past life. "People laugh at them and call them blind fools," she wrote. Sabriye began Braille Without Borders after a trip to Tibet where she rode horseback through remote villages and found blind children four years old who hadn't been taught to walk. She now trains more than forty blind students to use long white canes to navigate the chaotic streets of Lhasa, to use computers with voice synthesizers, and to read Braille in three different languages: English, Chinese, and Tibetan, which Sabriye developed herself. Sabriye asked if Erik would consider coming over for a visit, and that was the conception of Climbing Blind, Tibet 2004. Erik and his Mt. Everest team went to Tibet for two trips, the first to train six of Sabriye's most fit and motivated students, and the second to lead the six teens from age 13 to 19 on a month-long climbing expedition. After a month of pushing through cold and wind, along steep, rocky, and narrow trails, and across jumbled crevassed glaciers, the six blind students, Sabriye, Erik and his Mt. Everest team all stood together at 21,500 feet on the north face of Mt. Everest; Blind kids who were told they had evil spirits inside them, who were tied to beds in dark rooms, who were sold into slavery, ultimately stood higher than any team of blind people in the world. Said Erik, "Strength, courage, and resiliency exist in everyone, but they start as a tiny spark and it's only through facing challenges that they grow and blaze into the force that directs our lives and ultimately creates change in the world."