Erik Weihenmayer: Who He Is and How He Climbed Everest

Erik Weihenmayer is an American mountaineer, author and speaker who became the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on May 25, 2001. He lost his sight as a teenager. Since then he has climbed the highest peak on every continent, kayaked the Grand Canyon, co-founded the nonprofit No Barriers and written three books (Guinness World Records, erikweihenmayer.com). His surname is pronounced WINE-may-er (VOA Learning English).

Below: how the Everest climb worked, why the Seven Summits have two dates, the Grand Canyon trip, No Barriers, his books and braille. Pages were checked on October 30, 2026. Where sources disagree, we say so.

Key points

• First blind person on Everest: May 25, 2001. Guinness World Records, CNN and ABC News give the same date (GWR, CNN, ABC News).
• Teammates guided him by sound. They carried bells and called out the terrain (CNN).
• Two Seven Summits dates. He finished one list on September 5, 2002 and the harder one in August 2008 (ABC News, GWR).
• He reads braille. He says he uses it for notes, lists and stories for his daughter, although as a teenager he resisted it (ABILITY, CNBC).

Erik Weihenmayer at a glance

Each row is sourced in the sections below.

From wrestling to the first climb

Erik Weihenmayer was born in New Jersey (GWR) and lives in Colorado (CNN, 2016). In high school he took up wrestling, and he has said it was the first time as a blind person that he felt part of something bigger than himself (same CNN report). He represented his home state of Connecticut at the National Junior Freestyle Wrestling Championship in Iowa (his website), and the National Wrestling Hall of Fame gave him its Medal of Courage (ABC News).

At first he did not want to be seen as a blind person. He has said he refused to use a cane or learn braille (CNBC); for the cane, see white canes. Climbing changed that. At 16 he went rock climbing in New Hampshire on a program run by the Carroll Center for the Blind (Outside, GWR, 2025). He had heard about it in a newsletter in braille (ABILITY, 2024). He told Guinness he was learning echolocation then, and from a ledge he could hear the whole expanse of the valley below; see echolocation in blind people.

After college he taught at Phoenix Country Day School and joined the Arizona Mountaineering Club (his website, CNN, 2016). A fellow climber named Sam suggested Denali. They reached the top on June 27, 1995, after a 19-day climb (GWR, 2025). ABILITY Magazine notes the team of six summited on Helen Keller's birthday, which was June 27 (ABILITY, Helen Keller facts). There, the magazine says, small bear bells hung on the climber ahead of him, and partners gave oral cues for rock and ice: an "iceberg" was an immovable rock, "ankle burners" were a series of rocks dead ahead, and "rollers" were loose rocks or ice chunks.

Climbing Everest: how it worked

Erik Weihenmayer was 32 when he reached the summit of Everest on May 25, 2001 (CNN, VOA). The date also appears on his own site and in a World T.E.A.M. Sports profile (erikweihenmayer.com, World T.E.A.M. Sports). He wrote that he did not go as a guided client but with a team of friends he had climbed with for years (Outside).

Bells and voices. Three sources describe how he followed the route:

• His father told CNN on summit day that Erik follows bells carried by the climber in front of him, and that someone behind him gives verbal instructions. Erik is roped up only when everyone is, and "doesn't get pulled along on a rope" (CNN).
• The Christian Science Monitor, relaying what Erik told his father, said he followed bells tied to teammates' jackets and listened to their descriptions of boulders, bottlenecks and drop-offs (CSM).
• VOA Learning English said each team member wore bells and called out warnings, and that the climb took more than two months (VOA).

The icefall. In his own account of the climb he wrote that he crossed the Khumbu Icefall ten times, with a teammate in front "ringing a bell from the loop of his trekking pole." The first crossing took 13 hours. Later crossings took eight, seven and finally five hours, which he said was typical for an Everest climber. On ice, he wrote, he judged a placement by the sound of his axe striking it (Outside).

Summit day. The team left the South Col at 9 p.m. He wrote that most other expeditions were wary of sharing a summit day with him, so only one other team was behind them. In the dark he was at home: the climb had become harder for his teammates but slightly easier for him (Outside). Nineteen people from the team reached the top: Erik, ten Western teammates and eight Sherpas (same source). VOA and the World T.E.A.M. Sports profile describe that as a record for one team in a day (VOA, World T.E.A.M. Sports).

The doubters. Bigger names in climbing had warned him against going (ABC News). He later said they judged him on the one thing they knew about him, that he was blind (CNN, 2016). His team leader told him afterward, "Don't make Everest the greatest thing you ever do" (his website).

The National Federation of the Blind sponsored the expedition (CSM, VOA), and he has said the American Foundation for the Blind was the other sponsor (ABILITY). For both groups, see organizations for the blind.

The Seven Summits: two lists, two dates

The Seven Summits are the highest peaks on the seven continents, and there are two versions of the list. The Bass list uses Mount Kosciuszko in Australia. The Messner list uses Carstensz Pyramid, which Guinness World Records calls "the more demanding of the two Seven Summits lists" (GWR). Erik has finished both, which is why you will see 2002 in some places (our famous blind people article uses it) and 2008 in others. Guinness's own icon page credits him with finishing in 2002 and again in 2008 (GWR).

• September 5, 2002: Kosciuszko. ABC News reported that day that he was the first blind person to scale all seven, and Kosciuszko is the smallest of them at 7,310 feet (ABC News). Guinness gives the same date, and ABILITY Magazine called it the end of his quest (GWR, ABILITY).
• August 2008: Carstensz Pyramid. His site, No Barriers and CNN say 2008 (his website, No Barriers, CNN, 2016). Guinness says August 26; World T.E.A.M. Sports says August 20 (GWR, World T.E.A.M. Sports).

Dates: Guinness World Records and its 2025 interview unless the last column says otherwise.

Kayaking the Grand Canyon

In September 2014 Erik kayaked 277 miles of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon (his website). National Geographic gives the dates as September 7 to 27 (National Geographic), about three weeks; sources count 20 or 21 days. He trained for six years (Elevation Outdoors).

Some articles call it a solo trip, but the detailed accounts say guides paddled with him. They talked him through each rapid over waterproof Bluetooth radios, with calls like "paddle right" or "brace left." Harlan Taney paddled directly behind him (National Geographic, Elevation Outdoors). Silt got into the radios within a couple of days, so, he said, the guides went back to the old way: "Just yell your head off" (AFAR).

On day 15 Lava Falls flipped him and he swam. The next day he hiked back to the top and ran it again. "I just felt like I had to," he told National Geographic (National Geographic). Lonnie Bedwell, a blind veteran from Indiana, paddled the canyon the same month; Erik had convinced him to run it a second time (same source). The trip is the subject of Erik's book No Barriers and of the 2018 film The Weight of Water (Denver Gazette, GWR, 2025).

No Barriers and the Tibet climb

No Barriers is a nonprofit whose motto is "What's Within You Is Stronger Than What's In Your Way" (his website). It runs programs for veterans, youth and people with disabilities, plus an annual summit (his website). In 2010 Erik and his Everest team led the first Soldiers to Summits climb up Lobuche in the Himalayas (No Barriers).

Sources disagree on when it began: 2005 on his site and in CNN, 2003 in Guinness World Records, and a World T.E.A.M. Sports profile ties it to a Utah tower climb in 1999. Erik told Guinness the idea followed a call after Everest, so we give no year (his website, CNN, 2016, GWR, 2025, World T.E.A.M. Sports).

In 2004, after Everest, Braille Without Borders, a school for blind students in Tibet, invited him to teach mountaineering. He and teammates later led the teenagers onto the north side of Everest, to above 21,000 feet; sources give 21,000 or 21,500. The film Blindsight documents it (No Barriers, World T.E.A.M. Sports).

His books

• Touch the Top of the World: A Blind Man's Journey to Climb Farther Than the Eye Can See. A memoir about Everest. Open Library lists editions from 2001, and Penguin Random House lists a paperback dated March 26, 2002. World T.E.A.M. Sports says it was published in ten countries and six languages.
• The Adversity Advantage: Turning Everyday Struggles Into Everyday Greatness (2007). Co-written with Paul Stoltz (World T.E.A.M. Sports). The Denver Gazette calls it a self-help guide (Denver Gazette).
• No Barriers: A Blind Man's Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon (2017). A memoir of the 2014 trip, which the Denver Gazette reported as a Colorado Book Award finalist (Denver Gazette). CNN reported in 2016 that it would be out in February 2017 (CNN, 2016).

Films include Farther Than the Eye Can See on the Everest climb and Blindsight (World T.E.A.M. Sports). We didn't check whether the books exist in braille.

Does Erik Weihenmayer read braille?

Yes. In a 2002 interview he said braille is the way a blind person reads, and listed how he uses it: note cards for presentations, a computer with a braille display, grocery lists, phone numbers and addresses. "I read stories to my daughter in Braille," he said (ABILITY).

The path there was not smooth. As a teenager he said "I didn't want to learn Braille" (CNBC). A braille teacher in his freshman year tried to interest him with articles, including one on Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, who climbed Everest in 1953 (GWR, 2025). After his first rock climb he decided to take braille seriously and to read his essays aloud in class from braille (ABILITY, 2024).

He compared learning braille at 25 to learning print at that age and said people just don't approach it with the same expectations (ABILITY); for adult learners, see how to learn braille as an adult. He said audio is useful but, to him, not the same as active reading (same source). The American Foundation for the Blind named him a National Braille Literacy Champion (World T.E.A.M. Sports). In 2025 Guinness World Records presented him with a bespoke braille certificate for his induction as an ICON (GWR, 2025).

The sources say "braille" and nothing more: they don't say which braille code or grade he reads. For how blind people read, see how do blind people read; for sports built for blind players, see sports for blind people.

Where Braillito fits

Braillito, our app, teaches braille. It teaches the braille cells in lessons with exercises you play, with lives, levels and a daily streak: 59 lessons in 8 worlds in English. It also has a translator, a dictionary and a cell builder. The English lessons are uncontracted braille (grade 1); they don't teach contracted braille or transcription, and Braillito isn't a braille transcriber.

Nothing here means Erik Weihenmayer uses or endorses Braillito. If his story makes you want to learn braille yourself, the cells are where it starts. The translator on braillito.com shows how a word or short phrase looks in UEB, but it only applies the rules a program can apply, so it doesn't replace a transcriber. Without paying, the braille translator works in any browser.

Braillito is a subscription with no free version; depending on the plan, it starts with a free trial or a discounted first period, if it's your first subscription (is Braillito free?). Get Braillito.

Frequently asked questions

Who is Erik Weihenmayer?

An American mountaineer, author and speaker who became the first blind person to reach the summit of Everest, on May 25, 2001 (Guinness World Records).

How did Erik Weihenmayer climb Everest?

With a team. Teammates wore bells and called out the terrain, and one crossed the icefall ahead of him ringing a bell from a trekking pole (CNN, Outside).

Is Erik Weihenmayer the only blind person to climb Everest?

He was the first, on May 25, 2001 (Guinness World Records). Some profiles call him the only one. We found no two sources that agree on how many blind climbers have reached the top since, so we don't give a count.

When did he finish the Seven Summits?

It depends on the list. Kosciuszko on September 5, 2002 completed one list, and Carstensz Pyramid in August 2008 completed the other (ABC News, GWR).

Does Erik Weihenmayer read braille?

Yes. He has said he uses it for presentation notes, lists and reading to his daughter. The sources don't say which braille code he reads (ABILITY).

What books has he written?

Touch the Top of the World (Everest), The Adversity Advantage (with Paul Stoltz, 2007) and No Barriers (the Grand Canyon, 2017); see the books section above.