This blind mountaineer climbs the world’s highest summits. New documentary shares his journeys
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Erik Weihenmayer lives for adventure. The professional mountaineer and rock climber has summited Denali and the Seven Summits — that’s the highest point on every continent.
And he’s done it all without sight.
In 2001, he became the first blind person to reach the top of Mount Everest. And, in a new documentary called "Soundscape," he tells us how he does it — largely using echolocation — and a thirst for life that was sparked when he was a teenager, when he went blind.
His dad had him join a recreation program for blind kids. They would go on adventures — horseback riding, sailing, and one week, it was rock climbing.
Full interview
ERIK WEIHENMAYER: Enough said, man, it was, it was adventure. Hanging off my fingertips and figuring out using my hands and my feet as my eyes to get myself from point A to point B to point C and like doing all these crazy moves and physical moves and leverage to figure out how to connect the dots. I was like, wow, this is, this is the adventure that I crave.
It was the week before his freshman year in high school when he lost the last vestiges of his sight. And he wondered what his life was going to be like, but he says he wasn't worried so much about actually being blind. He was more worried about missing out on life.
WEIHENMAYER: Yeah. I'm a pragmatist. You know, not being able to see beautiful pictures and scenery is, is one thing, but not being able to live fully is like the most terrifying thing in the world. And so for me it was about living, you know, like I didn't. Like I remember sitting in the cafeteria one time, and there were all these kids across the cafeteria, and they're having this massive food fight, and all I could think about was like, man, I wish I could be in the middle of that food fight. I don't want to be stuck here, you know.
So yeah, for me, it's about wanting to live a life of adventure and I didn't even know what that might look like as a blind person.
That's amazing. That's amazing. OK, so this new documentary is about the summit you made of the Incredible Hulk, and we have to stop for a moment and have you explain this for folks because this is radio, they can't see it. Like I saw it in the documentary. This is huge.
WEIHENMAYER: It's a massive face. Yeah, it's a massive vertical face, and the Sierra Nevadas, on the eastern side of the Sierras. And, and not only is there, is it a huge vertical face, but it's about a four or five hour hike up, you know, some of the worst terrain just to get to the base. So, yeah. And then my friend Timmy, who's this world class climber, he's like, let's do it in a day. And I'm like, really? OK.
I want to get to that in a moment. But describe for us first how it is that you hike now, because you use various techniques, like you hike with a partner that's helpful. You hike using two sticks that you sort of feel with. But you also use echolocation.
WEIHENMAYER: Yeah. And then my friends will walk in front of me and they'll jingle a bear bell in front of me. And that gives me a lot of feedback. And then yes, I use echolocation, which it was really made famous by this blind guy named Daniel Kish who can echolocate like nobody's business. I mean, he can ride a bike and hear trees on the side of the road, and I can do it pretty well. You know, it's the idea that sound is really comprised of sound vibrations. And so it's always sound vibrations of different sizes of, you know, different sound waves bouncing off of objects.
And so like in the film, we talk about how when it bounces off a rock, it's a really hard crisp bounce. When it's bouncing off of a tree, it's filtered, because the sound is going through the leaves and it's partially bouncing back, but you can get the idea of the shapes of things and the density of things. You know, when I'm hiking, I can hear the slope or the cliff to my left and the giant drop off to my right. So, yeah, it's a really helpful tool for a blind person, and most of us can do it to some degree.
That's a beautiful description. Like you can tell the difference between a rock and a tree, but when you're navigating, not just the hiking on the floor of the, of the forest, right, but like you're rock climbing up a summit like this, that is just completely vertical. How do you use it then, or is it just at that point mostly feeling?
WEIHENMAYER: I'd say that the hiking is the most vulnerable part for me because I'm, you know, I'm, I'm like an, an like a dog trying to use four legs instead of two legs, you know, leaning on those poles, making sure every step counts, that it's not, I'm not gonna break my ankle or step in a hole or off a cliff, you know. So it's a lot of work to get to the face. And once I get to the face, and my hands and feet are engaged, man. That's the fun part, right?
Because it's this physical experience of, of just using every part of your body to physically move up this vertical environment. And yeah, I'd say at that point, it becomes more about touch and about movement.
I wonder if you can describe for us what it feels like to get to the top of a summit like that. A lot of people would probably say like, why hike it if you can't see the view at the top, right? But that's not what it's about for you, it sounds like.
WEIHENMAYER: And that's really why we made this film because people say like, hey, if you can't see, why would he, what does he get out of the mountains? And the view is spectacular. The view, the feeling of the rock. The way when I my hands and feet touch the rock, it lights up in my brain. Just because I'm blind, it doesn't mean I'm not a very visual thinker.
So whenever I'm getting information through my hands, through my ears, through my sense of smell, that's all being translated to a visual image in my mind. The world lights up. But I just need to get the information into my brain so that my brain can then see the world in its own way.
When I get to the top, yeah, it's, you can hear the sound vibrations moving out through space in this beautiful, infinite kind of scary way because the sound vibrations aren't bouncing off of a lot of things. They're just moving out through the universe. And so you feel like this tiny little speck in this massive sea of sound, and it's a great view.
That's a very different way of describing a view, but it's certainly a view. Wow. In the documentary, there's this beautiful scene, and it sounds like this is common for you when you're hiking, but your hiking partner takes your hand and traces it along the mountain tops in the distance so that you can visualize what this looks like. What does that look like in your mind?
WEIHENMAYER: What it looks like is when, I love to draw, when I could see till I was 14. And I would draw all kinds of landscapes and mountains and, and all the things that I could see out of my limited vision. So when Timmy takes my finger and runs it over these serrated ridges of the mountains, as he's running my finger over that landscape, it's like a drawing coming into focus in my brain. And it, and, and it is funny because it's been a long time since I've actually seen the world.
So I'm sure in my brain it's kind of like a weird cartoon image, but it's still visual image, you know.
Yeah, that's really interesting. When you're on the side of the mountain like that, you're hanging on. I mean, you have ropes and helmets and such, but those are life defying kind of moments. Do you think because you can't see the drop, you're more fearless in a way?
WEIHENMAYER: I can hear the drop. But you know, so I can, I can hear the sound of it. You know, like when I climbed Everest and I was crossing over the Khumbu Icefall, I was on these ladders over these giant crevasses and you could hear the echo below you, but I don't know, falling into what you can see or falling into the unknown, which is scarier. They're both pretty scary actually.
But for me, the challenge of rock climbing, which is the fun part of it, as well is that when I lock off on my hand and, and, try to get my other hand as high as I can, I'm scanning across the face and, you know, and I, I don't, you know, I can't find that hold that's out of reach. It's all what I'm feeling under my hands. And so I'm having to figure out how to make it work, you know.
So I don't always use the best hold or the hold that, that sighted person next to me is using, but somehow I figure it out and, and make it work, because if you just keep scanning for the perfect hold, you're going to run out of energy. So you just have to, you just have to make do. And it's a for me, it's a really fun process and it's so engaging to be able to like problem solve your way up this vertical environment.
It's such a connection between your mind and your body and your spirit. It's, it's when I feel the most connected.
Yeah, do you think if you had not lost your sight, you would still do this?
WEIHENMAYER: It's such a hard question. I've been asked that before, and I don't know, because at some point, like my life diverged from a sighted person's life. You know, like, so maybe if I had been able to see, I would have loved basketball, it would have been a, like, tiny bit above average basketball player and, and I would have lived this very traditional life.
I, I always think that I'd like to think of myself that I'd be adventuresome. But I, I don't know. You know, I think when, when you go blind, and you have that moment in the cafeteria where, like, what is my life gonna look like? It pushes you to search. And in that process of searching and accepting adventure into your life, you discover a lot of great stuff that you might not have otherwise found.
