Climbing Blind in Tibet

The six inches of overnight snow melted in the beaming morning sun, turning deep, yak-packed muddy grooves into ankle-sucking divots. Boots slipped and slid, and bodies stumbled. “I was a little bit tired and it was a little difficult to breathe,” admitted Kyla, a multilingual massage therapist. “But this is so much fun—and it’s a chance to show others that blind people can do anything—so I don’t mind.” Later, the bright morning became an afternoon of hammer-the-face snow squalls and zero visibility.

Hiking through the stunning Nyechen Thanglhas on the fourth day went smoothly. But upon arriving at the base of Mt. Chitze—the destination for three days of glacier travel training—on day five, the team was surprised by a super-high snow line. “To reach it would have taken at least two days of technical side-hilling over loose scree, and zig-zagging around gendarme rocks,” observed Weihenmayer, “with the prospect of finding only dirty, marginal snow.”

The trek was scrapped, and rescheduled as a three-day glacier clinic for the fall. In the meantime, to give them the feel of glacier travel, the kids—clad in full mountaineering fashion with plastic boots, crampons, and harnesses, and toting ice axes—shuffled up and down steep, scrub-brush-peppered slopes, connected by a rope.

“We went into this with the question, do the kids have what it takes to get to the top of a 7,000-meter peak?” said Erik. “I now know that all six have a real chance of standing on top when we attempt to climb Lhakpa Ri in October.

Our team returned to Tibet that October for the Lhakpa Ri expedition, which was made into a documentary, BlindSight. The flick has swept awards as it travels the international film festival circuit. More to come about the fall expedition in a follow-up story.


Photo: Stefani Jackenthal guiding Kyla