Adventure Beat

Erik Weihenmayer is well-known in two disparate communities which he has almost single-handedly brought together. Climbers know him as a daring athlete who has summited the highest peaks on all seven continents, including

Mount Everest. The blind know him as one of their own, someone who doesn't let his handicap prevent him from reaching his personal summits. His nonprofit organization, No Barriers, began seven years ago, as he recounts in this except from his forthcoming book, "The Adversity Advantage," to be published in January by Fireside.

A few years ago I got the opportunity of a lifetime, to climb a 1,000-foot tower in Moab, Utah, with two amazing pioneers. Together, we formed a one-of-a-kind team: a blind man, a paraplegic, and a double-leg amputee.

My first partner was Mark Wellman. When Mark was nineteen years old, he fell in the Sierra Nevadas and broke his back. The news that he would never walk again shook the very foundation of his spirit, but that didn't deter him from going through painful rehabilitation, building up his shoulders, back, and arms, and eventually learning to climb again.

Mark invented an ingenious climbing system in which he wore a body harness attached to an ascender, a mechanical device which bit into the rope like teeth, making it possible to slide up the rope, but not down. Above, he attached a modified pull-up bar to the rope, also by an ascender. Mark would then slide the bar up the rope as far as his arms would reach. When it locked off, he would hang from it and do a pull-up to its base. Afterwards, he would rest a second and repeat the whole process. 

With the stretchy rope and the wobbly bar, each pull-up only gained Mark about eight inches. Five years after his accident, Mark climbed the infamous 3,300-foot rock face of El Capitan. It was estimated he did about 7,000 pull-ups in seven days.

Hugh Herr was our second partner.  Seventeen years old and already a brilliant rock and ice climber, Hugh summited Mount Washington in a blizzard, got disoriented and lay in a hole for three days while his legs froze. After losing his legs below the knees, Hugh went on to get a doctorate in engineering at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology, where he developed extremely lightweight prosthetic legs and special, never-before-seen detachable climbing feet.

He had two kinds, both much smaller than adult human feet, which he made from the same sticky rubber used in climbing shoes. One pair was attached vertically, used to wedge into cracks, and a horizontal pair, used to stand on ledges as small as the width of a dime. Five years after Hugh's accident, he was a better climber than he had been before; for a time, he was ranked in the top ten climbers in the country.

Along the two-mile trail to the base of the climb, I got the privilege of carrying Mark on my back piggyback style, his legs resting on my curled arms as I strained to jab my trekking poles out in front of us. With all one-hundred-sixty-five-pounds of him on my back, his muscular arms clutching my neck, we were an out-of-control video game. Mark desperately called out directions. "Deep ruts in the trail!" I jerked to the left to avoid them. "Cliff on the left!" I jerked back right and we bounced jarringly through the ruts.

Hugh led the five-pitch climb. I seconded, followed by Mark. The day was growing colder and beginning to snow. I yelled down to Mark, "You got an extra pair of gloves? It's so freaking cold, Hugh can't even feel his legs." Hugh only grunted.

At the summit, we sat together without speaking. The wind blew and the snow fell even harder. Mark finally broke the silence, "Not bad for three gimps, huh?"

From that experience, Hugh, Mark and I conceived the idea for No Barriers, a nonprofit organization designed to blast open doors of opportunity for disabled people and help them access the beautiful and rugged open spaces of the world. It was time to reach out and help others find ways to accomplish their own dreams, no matter what it took.

We held our first festival in Cortina, Italy, in the heart of the Dolomites. Several hundred amputees, paraplegics, and blind people converged on Cortina, where they interacted with scientists and researchers who were designing the latest assistive technologies. Participants were able to check out the latest and greatest wheelchairs as well as high-tech prosthetic legs with computerized knees, which are enabling above-the-knee amputees to walk. A blind technologist led blind people on hikes solely with the use of a talking Global Positioning System to guide their route.

Athletes like me led clinics on blind trekking and rock climbing. Mark led a hand cycling tour for paraplegics. At the end of No Barriers, Hugh, Mark, and I completed another climb together to demonstrate what was possible. Italian TV called our team, "The Wonder of the Alps."  

Preview Mountains Without Barriers from Serac Adventure Films. And to learn more about No Barriers, go to www.nobarriersusa.org.