Excerpt from the Afterword

Excerpt from the Afterword

The Braille Monitor

May, 2002

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Excerpt from the Afterword

by Erik Weihenmayer

Erik

Weihenmayer crosses a crevasse using a ladder

From

the Editor: In the December 2001 issue of Outside magazine the following

excerpt appeared from the thirty-page afterword to Erik Weihenmayer's autobiographical

book Touch the Top of the World. This chapter was written when Erik returned

from his successful summit effort. The paperback edition of his book, which

includes the afterword, is now available in bookstores. Here is a taste of it:

Tenacious

E

Last

May the elite climbing community told Erik Weihenmayer he didn't belong on Everest.

In this exclusive preview of the new afterword to Weihenmayer's book, Touch

the Top of the World, the blind mountaineer fires back.

A few days after I arrived in the

Khumbu Valley for the Mount Everest climb, a rumor began circulating. Because

I wasn't flopping on my face every few minutes, the Sherpas thought I was lying

about my blindness. Women would approach me in the alleys of Namche Bazaar and

wave their hands in front of my face. I'd feel the wind and flinch, which only

confirmed their suspicions.

Finally I resorted to drastic measures.

I asked Kami Tenzing, our climbing sirdar, into the kitchen tent. "Kami,"

I said, "I want to give you a message to take back to the Sherpas."

I pulled down my left lower eyelid, leaned my head forward, and my prosthetic

eye plopped into my palm. "I can take the other out if you want,"

I said.

"No!" he said firmly. "Not

necessary."

The greatest doubt about my pursuit

of Everest didn't come from the Sherpa community; it came from Himalayan veterans

in the United States. Climber and author Jon Krakauer wrote me a sincere letter

attempting to talk me out of my plans. "I am not at all enthusiastic about

your trip to Everest next spring," he wrote. "It's not that I doubt

you have what it takes to reach the summit. . . . It's just that I don't think

you can get to the top of that particular hill without subjecting yourself to

horrendous risk, the same horrendous risk all Everest climbers face, and then

some."

Krakauer's letter gave me pause, and

though I knew his attitude had been badly tainted by the 1996 Everest disaster,

I respected his honest attempt to dissuade me. Nonetheless, I held on to the

view that I would subject myself to less risk than other Everest climbers. I

wasn't going as a guided client, not knowing the people I'd be sharing a tent

with. I had surrounded myself with a good team of friends with whom I had climbed

extensively--no paid guides, no superstars, just a bunch of buddies with a shared

goal to reach the top and to be a self‑contained unit responsible to one

another along the way.

It was a quote from mountaineer Ed

Viesturs, however, in a magazine profile of me last spring that floored me.

"More power to him, and I support his going," Viesturs said. "But

I wouldn't want to take him up there myself. Because he can't see, he can't

assess the weather. . . . When I guide, I like people to become self‑sufficient.

With Erik, they'll have to be helping him, watching out for him every step of

the way."

It was tough going forward in the

face of experts who thought I would be a liability, risking my own life and

those of my teammates. I had only shaken Viesturs's hand once, so I couldn't

figure out how he presumed to know so much about my strengths and ability to

contribute to a team. He hadn't seen the sixteen years I'd been climbing, learning

rope management, crevasse rescue, and avalanche safety; he surely hadn't seen

the days spent on big walls when my teammates hung from anchors placed by the

blind guy. Or the years I spent becoming independent, learning to build snow

walls, cook meals on gas stoves, and set up tents in whiteouts. Viesturs hadn't

seen any part of my life except that I was blind.

Truth be told, I had heard all the

criticism before. When I rock climbed for the first time at age sixteen at a

recreational program in New Hampshire designed to build confidence in blind

teens, people had been supportive. "Good for you," they said repeatedly,

when there was a big fat top rope to dangle from. But when I talked about learning

to lead, most said I'd need to be able to see to place protection. So I learned

to lead anyway, with help from friends. When I wanted to climb ice, most had

warned, "It isn't stable like rock. You need eyes to know where to swing

your tools and to know whether it's a good stick." So I learned to climb

ice anyway, by feeling the face through the tips of my tools and assessing my

placement by the sound of my axe striking the ice.

The pattern continued, with expert

after expert telling me I would never be able to surmount each progressive challenge.

I pushed on, even though I often staggered beneath their pessimism, feeling

like I was being buried under a mountain of "you can't." Were they

right this time? I decided to go to Everest to see for myself.

At the start of the climb, after crossing

the Khumbu Icefall, a chaotic pile of ice, constantly avalanching and splintering,

I understood why the experts believed a blind person had little chance. Kicked‑out

boot marks wove a path through the jumble, often leaping over gaping crevasses.

I crossed the icefall ten times with a teammate moving in front of me, ringing

a bell from the loop of his trekking pole. My first trip took thirteen hours

of intense focus and communication, but with each subsequent trip I cut my time,

first to eight hours, then to seven, and finally to five, an average time for

an Everest climber.

Above the icefall the terrain turned

to steep snow and ice faces intermingled with short rock steps. I finally established

a rhythm in my pace and in my breathing and grew stronger each day. Where I

was stepping had become less important than maintaining good internal balance.

By summit day, oxygen deprivation, the steep face, and a 9:00 p.m. departure

time had reduced all of us to an arduous crawl. The mountain had become harder

for my team but had actually gotten slightly easier for me-‑I was used

to the darkness.

The best response to the naysayers

came on May 25, when I, along with ten western teammates and eight Sherpas,

stood on the summit of Everest. Ironically, my summit experience wasn't compromised

by hordes of climbers clogging fixed lines. Most of the expeditions were leery

of sharing a summit day with me, afraid I'd involve them in an "epic."

So we had left from the South Col with only one other team behind us and with

our full focus on the mountain.

Although making the summit was a great

honor, far and away the greatest honor of my life was the decision made by my

trusted friends, who told the doomsday experts to buzz off and linked their

lives to mine. Still, despite our success, plenty of detractors continue to

voice their opinions in Internet chat rooms and letters to magazines: "Now

that a blind guy's climbed it, everyone's going to think it's easy. People will

probably get hurt." "Why are people thinking this is such a big deal?

Anyone can be short‑roped to the top by nineteen seeing‑eye guides."

"Don't let 'em get to you,"

Chris Morris, a teammate, said after I shared their comments with him. "You

climbed every inch of that mountain and then some."

I knew he was right. There are some

who will never be convinced, others who have no idea what to think, but many

others for whom the climb forced a higher expectation of their own possibilities.

Mountains are the most powerful places on earth, demanding the utmost respect

from humans. But we enter far more dangerous territory when a few chosen experts

decide who belongs on them and who doesn't. Perhaps this is a decision best

left for the mountain gods.

A

deferred charitable gift annuity is a way for donors to save taxes and make

significant donations to the National Federation of the Blind. (The amounts

here are illustrative, not precise.) It works like this:

James Johnson, age fifty, has decided

to set up a deferred charitable gift annuity. He transfers $10,000 to the NFB.

In return, when he reaches sixty-five, the NFB will pay James a lifetime annuity

of $1,710 per year, of which $179 is tax free. In addition, James can claim

a charitable tax deduction of $6,387 of the $10,000 gift in the year the donation

is made.

For

more information about deferred gift annuities, contact the National Federation

of the Blind, Special Gifts, 1800 Johnson Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21230-4998,

phone (410) 659-9314, fax (410) 685-5653.

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