Tag Archive for: erik weihenmayer

“Never measure the height of a mountain, until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.”
-DAG HAMMARSKJOLOD

Today’s message is especially dedicated to Kris Le Crozier in Frisco, Colorado.

Born with a rare degenerative eye disease, Erik Weihenmayer became completely blind at age thirteen. He was told he would never be able to do the things other people did. He had a disability. Yet, Weihenmayer refused to accept a life with such limitations. After fighting his blindness for years, Erik learned to embrace his adversity, making it part of him.

First, he joined his high school wrestling team, became co-captain, and state champion runner-up in his class. Next, Weihenmayer took on the challenge of rock climbing-a difficult hobby for those with perfect eyesight. “Blindness won’t keep me from having fun,” Weihenmayer insist. He took his adversity-his blindness-and turned it into his strength, using his heightened senses to take on challenges few will conquer.

In 1995, he scaled 20,320 foot Mt. McKinley, North America’s highest peak. In 1996, he became the first blind person to ever scale the 3,000-foot granite monolith-El Capitan in Yosemite. Says Weihenmayer, a teacher at the private Phoenix Country Day School, “Blindness is just a nuisance.” As for climbing, he says, “You just have to find a different way of doing it.”

(From Adversity Quotient by Paul G. Stoltz, Ph.D)