Touch The Top Of The World

Erik Weihenmayer is a world-class athlete: an acrobatic skydiver, long-distance biker, and marathon runner, skier, mountaineer, ice climber, and rock climber. He was the first blind man to climb Alaska's Mt. McKinley. Then he became the first blind person to scale the infamous 3,000-foot rock face of Yosemite's El Capitan and Argentina's Acongagua, the highest peak outside of Asia. He married his longtime sweetheart at 13,000 feet on the Shira Plateau on his way to Kilimanjaro's summit, and recently Erik climbed Polar circus, the 30,000-foot vertical ice wall in Alberta, Canada. In May 2001 he reached the top of Mt. Everest. He is on course to reach all Seven Summits, the highest peaks on each of the seven continents, with only two left to conquer, and he plans to do so by the end of 2002. He lives in Colorado with his wife and young daughter. This is his story.