enguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England Published by Plume, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Previously published in a Dutton edition. First Plume Printing, April 2002 13579 10 8642 Copyright � Erik Weihenmayer, 2001, 2002 All rights reserved @ REGISTERED TRADEMARK�MARCA REGISTRADA The Library of Congress has catalogued the Dutton edition as follows: Weihenmayer, Erik. Touch the top of the world / Erik Weihenmayer. p. cm. ISBN 0-525-94578-4 (he.) ISBN 0-452-28294-2 (pbk.) 1. Weihenmayer, Erik. 2. Mountaineers�United States�Biography. 3. Blind athletes�United States�Biography. I. Title. GV199.92.W39 A3 2001 796.52'2'092�dc21 [B] 00-047618 Printed in the United States of America Original hardcover design by Leonard Telesca Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permis-sion of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN PUTNAM INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014. For Emma Contents Acknowledgments ix INTRODUCTION: McKinley's Kahiltna Glacier 1 1. Quasimodo 9 2. A World In-Between 33 3. Helplessness 48 4. Faint Recognition 62 5. Blind Warriors 79 6. Wizard, the Chick Magnet 99 7. Flailing to Independence 109 8. Perceptions 125 9. Thirty Sets of Eyes 135 10. Blind Faith 142 11. Preparation 155 12. Zero Zero 169 13. "Big" Changes 200 14. Uhuru 210 15. Moving Through Darkness 221 16. The Nose 243 17. The Slag Heap 258 18. I Did Not Die 274 19. The Song of the Sirens 280 Epilogue 301 Everest 305 Acknowledgments The course of one's life is like the ascent of a mountain. Although a climber may have the privilege of standing on top, it takes a team to get him there. I thank my friends and family, who have been my support team, creating opportunities in front of me, building a foundation of hope and confidence beneath me, and enabling me to reach my own summit. Thank you to my mother, who loved me fiercely and fought for my future like a mother lioness, and to my father, who taught me the power of action and inspired me with the courage to forge ahead despite formidable obstacles. Thank you to my grandparents, Martin and Talatha Baker. So much of who I am has come from you. Thanks to my brothers, Mark and Eddi, and my sister, Suzanne, who have always treated me like any other little brother and are my greatest fans. Thanks to my teachers and counselors, like Ms. Reddy and Mr. Wester-velt, who believed in me long before I was ready to believe in myself. Finally, thank you to my wife, Ellie, whose spirit and commitment has filled me with the certainty that there is no higher goal than to love fully. / am only one, but still I am one. I can not do everything, but still I can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do. �HELEN KELLER INTRODUCTION McKinley's Kahiltna Glacier For thousands of years, a massive tongue of the Kahiltna Glacier, forty miles long and a mile thick, has been inching its way down the western flanks of Mount McKinley, splintering, cracking, collapsing, and shearing off as if it were alive. Below fourteen thousand feet, giant gaping chasms bisect each other in chaotic patterns, but snowfall blows across the openings and freezes, so that deep crevasses are hidden from sight by a snow cover of only a few inches in places. On a past training climb, I had made the mistake of bragging to my teammates that I could sense when we were over a hidden crevasse by the soft tremulous feel of the snow and the slightly hollow thunk made by my boot steps. So, they had decided to test my claim by pushing me forward and making me lead across the notoriously suspect snowfield below our fourteen-thousand-foot camp. "This'll teach you to brag, Super Blind Guy," Jeff, a close friend and one of my teammates, called out as he and the others crept along behind, keeping taut the 150-foot climbing rope connecting us. The tension in the rope assured me they would be ready to hurl their bodies face-first into the snow, their chests driving in the pick of their axes, 2 A TOUCH THE TOP OF THE WORLD hopefully arresting me, if I were to plunge through. The dry bitter wind roared across the surface of the glacier, rattling through my GORE-TEX. The wind scoured the top layer of snow into a frozen crust, and I could hear the biting metal squeak of my crampons as they clawed into the ice. I stepped cautiously, listening as I slowly brought down the full weight of each step, forcing myself to breathe in rhythm. What were the chances of me stumbling upon a hidden crevasse, I thought, in this place, at this moment? I probed a trekking pole in front of me. Initially, it held, but suddenly it popped through the Styrofoam snow into emptiness, with me swooning forward, the pole sliding through to the handle. Then I heard it, the terrifying noise that climbers dread, the slit of a knife across the glacier and increasing to a loud zipper. I had heard this noise before, the sound of ice fracturing, breaking apart and zigzagging across the frozen ground, but I had never been so near. The snow around me collapsed with a whoomp. The muscles in my legs turned to putty and the rope stretched tighter as the team braced. I felt the lurch of my body and the snow beneath me dropping away, and I knew at once I had broken through. I could feel the air all around me, filling the space under my feet, along my legs, and against my face. Jeff yelled something, but his voice quickly faded in the rushing snow and gear that came with me. A moment later, I was confused because I was still standing. "It was a false shelf! You only dropped a few feet," Chris, our leader, yelled urgently. "Huh?" "What are you doing standing there, waiting for it to collapse again?" I forced my legs to move, mumbling, "False shelves! I never said I could feel false shelves." The lower shelf I moved across was softer than the first, sagging and creaking below me. I tried not to think of the bottomless cavern beneath the thin bridge. I climbed a jagged little ice hump, swinging my ax above it, biting in and pulling myself over what I assumed was the fracture line, and breathed out deeply, chuckling grimly because I knew everyone else now had to cross. McKinley's Kahiltna Glacier A 3 Later at our fourteen-thousand-foot camp, Sam, my primary training partner, said he could finally see the brilliant white ramparts of the West Buttress leading to the top of Mount McKinley, a mile and a half above us. It had taken us a week to get here, but besides the crevasse danger, it had only been a grueling slog up moderate snow slopes. Tomorrow, the real climbing would begin. Sam took my finger and brought it up the route we would climb, stopping at prominent landmarks like the sixty-degree headwall, Washbern's Thumb, and Pig Hill. He pointed out the second tallest peak, Mount Foraker. Then, I tried to point toward McKinley's summit. I pointed my finger a little higher than Foraker. "No. Higher!" Sam laughed. I raised my finger. "Still higher." I continued to point higher and higher. Finally, I pointed so high, I imagined I was pointing at the sun. "There!" Sam said, his voice softer and deeper now, "There's the summit of McKinley!" That is when I felt the stubborn fear washing over me, beginning in the pit of my belly and slowly seeping into my fingertips, making them tingle. All my life, fear had nearly paralyzed me. Rock climbing outside of Phoenix had definitely provided a healthy dose of fear, my one hand palming a precarious finger lock while my other hand scanned across the rock face, desperately searching for the next hold. For me, the fear of climbing blind does not come when I am hanging securely from a fat hold or after latching on to the next. The greatest fear is in the reaching, at that moment when I have committed my body and soul to finding the next hold, when I am hoping, predicting, praying I will find what I am seeking. But it isn't all fear. Despite the pain and frustration of going blind, the death of loved ones, the loss of my eyes to glaucoma, none of it had been enough to stamp out the hope. A delicate strand of hope balanced by fear, each keeping the other in its place. It was on the top of one of those rock faces when Sam suggested we try something a little bigger, "Maybe Mount McKinley." I had immediately said yes, and the decision had been like another reach into the darkness, the greatest reach of my life. That afternoon in the blazing heat, we built snow walls around our 4 A TOUCH THE TOP OF THE WORLD campsite. I knew about McKinley's legendary cold, but no one had told me about the heat, reflecting like a mirror off the snow and burning my eyeballs through the leather flaps of my glacier glasses. Then the wind, chilled by the glacier, whipped past me, taking much of my body's warmth with it. "Windburn on top of sunburn. Get used to it," Chris laughed, observing Sam and me constructing snow fortresses out of the glacier. Sam cut blocks of blue ice from the floor while I placed them in a rectangle around the site to block the wind. Soon the walls were as tall as me. Then I cut steps into our fort while Sam packed the small gaps in the walls with snow. Finally the site was ready for the tent. I held one side and threw the other into the wind, which caught it and unfurled it. I laid it on the ground and oriented it by feeling the loops and pockets on the corners through my layers of gloves. Months before on...
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