Erik Weihenmayer

Erik Weihenmayer ( born 1968 in New Jersey, USA) ascended as the first blind man on May 25, 2001 the summit of Mount Everest. In September 2002, Weihenmayer had also climbed the Seven Summits by the Mount Kosciuszko version, 2008, after the Carstensz Pyramid version.

In addition to the mountaineering and climbing in ice and rock operates Weihenmayer, among other paragliding, long distance cycling, marathon running and skiing. He is friends with Sabriye Tenberken and Paul Kronenberg, the founders of the organization Braille Without Borders, which he visited in Tibet.

Biography

Erik Weihenmayer was born in 1968 with the hereditary retinoschisis, by which he totally blind at the age of 13 years. He finished 1987, the Weston High School in Connecticut. As captain of the wrestling team his school, he was represented at Connecticut at the National Freestyle Championships in wrestling. In 1991, Weihenmayer completed his studies at Boston College and boarded in the same year, several peaks of the Pamir Mountains in Tajikistan.

In 1993, he finished his teaching degree at Lesley College and began teaching in Phoenix as a teacher. In the same year he crossed the Batura Glacier in the Karakoram in Northern Pakistan. Two years later ascended Weihenmayer, sponsored by the American National Organisation of the Blind, Mount McKinley, the highest peak in North America.

Erik Weihenmayer was 1996, the Olympic Torch through Phoenix. In 1997 he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, and married on the summit. With his father, a Vietnam veteran, he cycled then in 1998 with a tandem from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City. 1999 Weihenmayer climbed the summit of Aconcagua in Argentina and on 25 May 2001 saw the Mt Everest.

2004 led Weihenmayer an expedition in Tibet, "Climbing Blind " project called, took part in the blind youth of Braille Without Borders - school for the blind in Lhasa, and an American film crew. There was yet the film entitled Blindsight, which at the Toronto International Film Festival had its premiere in 2006 and was shown at the Berlinale 2007.