Summiting Mountains and Kayaking Rivers with Erik Weihenmayer - Blind Adventurer

They always want to know how I've done it and how I've got smiling all along the way.

Well, I've just chosen to focus my attention.

I hope to inspire you to focus on the past.

You know what?

I hope that I can also be a source of inspiration for you to just be past my in the aftermath of the surgery that saved my life back in 2003.

I was plunged into a a new world, a world of darkness.

A world that I never wanted to be, and I wish so badly I could crawl my way out of.

Because if you know my story, then you know that I had awoke from surgery to be left completely blind.

Everything that I knew in life had to be relearned or thrown away.

Driving, well, that was one of those things to be thrown away.

Reading, getting around, well, that would have to be relearned.

Because now something as simple as reading would now rely on me feeling bumps on a piece of paper that they called braille, or me listening to an audio tape, or a talking voice on my computer, getting around, well, I went from a 17-year-old teenager who had his own Ford F-150 pickup truck to now a blind guy with a cane.

To say that I hated this new life would be an understatement.

I also started to find out about all these new services, services designed to help people who are blind or visually impaired.

And I will say that these services are phenomenal.

They are the ones who provided me with the teachers who taught me how to learn Braille, how to use the computer with talking software, or how to use a cane, a mobility cane to get around.

But it was around this time that I also, because now I am part of this blind community, started hearing the name of Eric Weinemeer.

A couple of years before I went blind in 2001, Eric Weinemeyer would become the first blind person to summit Mount Everest.

He would then go on to climb to the highest peak on all continents.

Plus, I guess once he figured out he had climbed high enough, he would start kayaking the world's rivers, his greatest accomplishment being kayaking the entire Grand Canyon.

As amazing as Eric sounds, for me back then, I wanted nothing to do with him.

The more I heard people talk about Eric Weinmeyer, this blind superhero, the more I disliked him.

Because for me, at that time, he represented this world, this new life that I hated.

It wouldn't be until years later when I would read Eric's book about him kayaking the Grand Canyon called No Barriers, a blind man's journey to kayak the Grand Canyon, that I would realize that the picture I had painted in my mind of who Eric Weinmeyer was was indeed completely false.

He was no blind superhero.

Matter of fact, he was just an ordinary guy like me, but who has this crazy awesome sense of adventure about him.

I would go on to discover podcasting.

As you can see, I really became quite fond of it.

And during this time, I discovered the No Barriers podcast, in which Eric Weinemeyer is a host.

It even further let me realize wow, Eric's just a really awesome, cool guy.

One of those guys who you can see being on a camping trip with, sitting around the campfire, talking shop, you know, and just hanging out with.

And well, here we are in my journey, next week, marking the 18th anniversary of the day I became blind.

And I'm here releasing the 60th episode of my podcast, in which I'm sitting down with this guy I'm talking about, Eric Weinmeyer.

SPEAKER_00: One surface, I was a teacher for six years and I loved it.

I could have taught forever.

I was a middle school English teacher.

I taught cited kids.

I went blind when I was 14, I guess, about a week before my freshman year in high school.

So went on and taught for six years, loved it.

But then I got this idea that I could make a living in the outdoors somehow.

Wasn't exactly sure how to do that, but I had some good friends and good support systems.

And so I've been uh climbing and adventuring and making films and writing books and speaking and working with folks with different kinds of challenges for the last, I don't know, 25 years.

SPEAKER_01: Wow.

That's so amazing.

So now, so you mentioned when you went blind right before your freshman year of high school.

So what happened that caused you to go blind?

SPEAKER_00: Oh, just a genetic flaw.

You know, I just was either missing some genes or I had a, you know, something wrong with my with my genes.

And so it was an X-linked disease called retinoschesis.

It was congenital.

I was born with it, and so I never could see that well.

I could see well enough to ride a bike.

I used to ride a little mini motorcycle around the neighborhood.

I'd borrow my buddy's motorcycle, probably not the smartest thing because I could only really see barely out of one eye.

But anyway, I'd be the kid like running behind the group in the woods, you know, tripping over rocks and banging into trees and trying to keep up with everyone when we were little ragamuffins.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

That's awesome.

That's you you kind of uh grew up with this kind of adventurous spirit about you.

SPEAKER_00: I mean, yeah, I think so.

I mean, we would do really adventuresome dumb things.

I, you know, this is like that moment where you say, Don't try this at home.

But yeah, we would do we would jump off of out of trees or off of roofs and land in piles of leaves, jump over rocks, you know.

A lot of times we'd go to the Devil's Glen, it was called, which was a river.

It was illegal to jump, but we would go off this 40-foot cliff, we'd jump, and I'd try to, you know, I couldn't see the water down there.

It was too far away, but I could uh point my cane and my friends would be like, okay, not there, not there, not there.

Okay, right there.

That's where you gotta land.

And I'd nail it.

I'm alive.

So anyway, but not the smartest things, but as a kid, you're trying to figure out what adventure looks like.

And I hadn't turned to climbing yet, so I didn't really know what it was.

But some of the stuff I did, you'd probably define as reckless.

Yeah.

But you have to grow into like a sense of responsibility and maturity.

I think I'm still evolving.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

That's too awesome, man.

I, oh my gosh, I love it.

Absolutely love it.

So now at some point, so I know that the main thing that I'm excited to talk with you about today is, I guess, kind of your more recent adventures of, you know, kayaking the Grand Canyon.

But, you know, I feel like it would be kind of just crazy for me not to, you know, mention it and telling the audience today that you are, you know, if if anybody is thinking, his name sounds familiar.

It might be that little thing about being the first blind guy to reach the summit of Mount Everett.

Yeah, that little thing.

Yeah, just a little thing.

Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Well, I've been climbing full time, you know, and working my way around the world, climbing mountains and just loving it.

You know, love the idea of having my life as this great adventure and going to every continent and having these amazing adventures, as I just said.

And and so, yeah, Everest was definitely a dream.

But I mean, I didn't know whether I could actually stand on top.

I it's that sort of a courageous moment when you even talk about it out loud, right?

You tell people like, I want to do this, because you feel like an idiot.

Like, you know, people are gonna laugh at you, people are gonna say, this is dumb, this is reckless, this is not realistic.

So yeah, I got everything under the sun.

But I, you know, really it came down to having confirmation but from the people that I climbed with.

They're like, you know, you climb really well, you're really strong, you have as good a chance as anyone I know or better.

You're more qualified than probably 90% of the people that go to the mountain.

And, you know, the people that were like saying, you can't do this or this is crazy, they were judging me on what they thought about blindness, what they knew about blindness.

They weren't judging me on things that that that were part of me.

Sure, blindness is a deficit for sure.

I mean, it's a barrier, but it's like the, you know, one of the top five barriers.

But there are other things that can compensate that can become an advantage, you know, your your work ethic, your fitness, your your ability to perform and create systems up in those really hostile environments, the kind of team you put around yourself.

I mean, there's so many factors that those people hadn't kept in mind.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely, definitely.

So now, when you started climbing and stuff, though, I mean, did you do like the and just you're gonna have to forgive my lack of knowledge of of climbing and hiking and all that, but like did you do a lot of like the the typical, we think of like the rock climbing, like scaling the rock face and stuff like that?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's how I started climbing.

Uh rock climbing.

It's still to this day my favorite, although it's probably one of the hardest things.

My fingers are actually aching right now from little finger injuries hanging by my fingertips off rock faces.

But yeah, so I was blind and I had gone to the Carroll Center for the Blind, which is a rehabilitation center for blind people, learning how to use a cane, learning how to use echolocation, how to use computers with voice synthesizers, how to match your clothes, you know, all kinds of stuff that was really important.

And I wasn't really that thrilled about being in, you know, this blind rehabilitation center.

But they also had this fall recreational program.

And, you know, back then blind kids would get left out as ball sports and PE class.

So my dad said, this might be a really good idea for you.

Anyway, so I went up and joined this group of blind people, and they were actually really cool.

And they'd take us out to canoe or sail or cross-country ski.

I remember one was a tandem bike trip to Martha's Vineyard, which I loved.

I love tandem biking.

But really, what was the most made the biggest impact on me was climbing, rock climbing.

So they brought us to North Conway, New Hampshire.

And I was just one of the group, but I was a fit little kid because I had started wrestling in high school.

I was on my wrestling team.

So I scanned and felt and bled and problem-solved my way up the rock face.

Got to this little dish, maybe like a hundred feet up, and was just sitting there and I was listening to the valley below me, like the echo of the sounds that were coming up out of the valley and bouncing off the rock faces.

And it was fall, so I could hear the leaves rustling and the leaves blowing along the ground.

It was just so stimulating, so beautiful, and it really represented to me what I thought adventure felt like.

And, you know, honestly, when I went blind, that was my greatest fear.

It wasn't that I couldn't see or that I wouldn't see beautiful sunsets anymore.

It was really more about all the things I was gonna miss out on.

And I didn't really know how to define it or, you know, perceive it or have the context at that time.

But but as it turned out, what I was really searching for was that adventure and that connection with other human beings.

SPEAKER_01: Oh man, I totally love that.

Oh my gosh.

Now, so that type of rock climbing, how does that thing compare to what you faced when you climbed to Everest?

SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a big jump between rock climbing and a big snowy mountain, high altitude mountain.

So I actually was in the I was teaching at the time in Arizona, and I had this friend whose name is Sam, and he was a substitute teacher, and he was a really good climber.

And he's I told him I was a climber, and he's like, but but I hadn't honestly climbed that much.

I had climbed a couple times in this program.

And Sam said, Let's go out.

And so we started climbing together, and we're climbing these rock faces in the desert.

And I think I got to the top of one of them, and Sam said, Hey, we should try something a little bigger.

I thought, like, well, what?

You know, a bigger rock face?

He said, How about let's try Denali?

Oh, wow.

And I got really excited about that.

I'm very impressionable, honestly.

I mean, I'm being totally frank.

I mean, I get really carried away with like with ideas, like, wow, I wonder if that's possible.

And I don't know if I'm the guy that can do it, but it seems like that would be possible, maybe, even though you in the beginning of these processes, you have way more questions than answers.

But anyway, Sam and I launched ourselves out on this preparation for a year and a half, a little less than a year and a half.

Basically trying to climb mountains all around the lower 48 and failing at every one of them.

We never reached the summit of anything.

By the time we got to Denali, we were pretty prepared.

You know, we had we we didn't know whether we were going to be any good at climbing, but we were fit and we'd we'd learned a ton like how to drag each other out of crevasses and how to endure weather and how to dress, you know, how to set up tents as a blind guy, how to cook meals on stoves.

And so like I had gone on this fast track in anyway.

So on Denali, 19 days later, we reached the summit, and I think it was June 27th, 1995.

It was Helen Keller's birthday.

We didn't even know that at the time.

No way.

Yeah, so we got down and I was like sitting in this igloo that we had built at 17,000 feet.

And I thought, you know, honestly, your life's so much about tension, right?

Like, it's not like this perfect square peg going into a square hole, you know.

It's like there's always tension, there's this knife edge that you're walking on, with on one side like fear and you know, some sadness and and some anxiety, and and then on the other side, you know, adventure and excitement and joy and connection.

And, you know, so I was kind of straddling at that at that moment, just thinking, okay, I don't think I'm really cut out for this life.

I'm I mean, this has been the hardest thing I've ever done by tenfold, you know.

But the other side of me wants to do this forever.

So maybe call me a Walter Mitty, you know, but I had big dreams, even though I wasn't sure I could physically, mentally handle it.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, oh my gosh, I love it.

But but obviously, though, reaching the summit of denali, it did something in you to show you what you were capable of, what was possible, to then lead to you summiting Mount Everest years later.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.

But it's not like one moment on Everest, like, you know, changes you forever.

I mean, that's a little bit of a way it might be presented in books, you know what I mean?

But but yeah, for sure, it began to gradually develop within me this idea that we talk about a lot at the organization that I help lead called No Barriers.

We work with thousands and thousands of people with challenges to help them break through their barriers.

And what we say is what's within me is stronger than what's in my way.

So that's I think an acknowledgement that yes, there are real barriers in the world.

You know, I think it's BS to be like, oh, these barriers are only in the mind.

I mean, yeah, some of them we create for sure.

Yeah.

The mind is complex and creates barriers, but a lot of barriers are real.

You know, a blind guy climbing a mountain is real, a blind person going and trying to get a job and living independently is real.

Those are hard barriers to break through for all of us.

And so uh the message was for me that hey, but what I can gather up inside of me and the kind of people that I can surround myself with can be a strong enough force to break through those very real barriers that exist in the world.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely.

Oh my gosh, I love it.

I absolutely love that entire mindset in so in your book, and I can't remember if it was in your book that I read it, if I heard you say it on a podcast, or maybe in multiple places, but at some point in the story of you climbing Everest, at some point, and I don't know who said it, exactly how it was said, but somebody looked at you and they told you, don't let Everest be the greatest thing you ever do.

SPEAKER_00: Well, what the yes, for so that was P V, our team leader, who organized the trip and was really amazing.

Okay.

Hey P V, if you ever listen to this, he's great.

Pasquale Vincent Scutur.

But we just call him PV.

And we got down, I got down through the Kumbu ice fall.

Blind person's worst nightmare trying to get through the Kumbo ice fall, jumbled up boulders of ice of every size imaginable, from skyscrapers down to baseballs, just rolling, tumbling, exploding down the mountain like a river of ice.

You gotta get through this thing.

There's crevasses winding everywhere and zigzagging, and some of them are so wide you have to cross over ladders that three or four or five ladders lash together over these gigantic expanses.

So anyway, I'd made it down through the icefall, and we'd crossed up and down through it ten times.

And so got down below the ice fall.

I was like, oh my god, I'm safe.

I'm like, I'm gonna make it.

And that's when PV said, Hey, do me a favor, don't let this mountain be the greatest thing you ever do.

And that did throw me for a minute, because I was like, I was already starting, well, I was basking in the glory for sure, but I thought, like, okay, you bask in the glory, and this is it.

Like, this is the best thing.

There's nowhere else to go that's higher.

Yep.

And I think over time, what I realized PV was saying was of course, adversity, you know, these challenging things that can knock you on your butt, you know, they they can be huge game enders.

But success in a weird way can be a game ender.

You know, you go home, you put the trophy on your shelf, or you put that picture on the wall, and that room becomes the mausoleum of your life, like looking back and saying, Look what I did once 50 years ago.

I think what he was saying, in my interpretation, was that you know, these experiences need to mean something.

They have more value than, you know, listing them on your resume.

They they should be experiences where you learn something that then propels you to the next place in your life and propel you to that next adventure, that next discovery.

And so for me, thank God PV gave me that advice and helped me understand the context of that because it led to kayaking, it led to founding no barriers.

We just had our no barriers summit.

It was a combined in-person and virtual event.

I think we had over seven million views from around the world, 50 countries, every state in the US represented.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: So that's what PB was saying.

Like, don't look back too long.

You know, drink your hazelnut latte and eat a couple croissants and enjoy the moment, but use this experience to do something greater.

And that wasn't like do something scarier or bolder or riskier.

It was just do something with this that's meaningful.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, and that's what that's exactly that's what I remember when when I heard it and and I thought about that often when I when I've when whenever I've seen things with you and and I've read your books and and and watched the documentary, The Weight of Water, and and all that, that that quote comes back to me so much because I do, I think it is it has such power in it for all of us, for all aspects of our life.

You know, in my mind of of just you know, keeping going and and realizing that every single day and moment is a true gift and a blessing, and to you know, make the most out of it.

So I I just it was a very simple statement.

I think in the context that it was was said to you at first, like you said, you could kind of take it a different way, but in reality, very vital, very vital.

SPEAKER_00: So yeah, and my whole team, by the way, went on to do really cool stuff.

You know, PV went on to raft the entire Blue Nile River, thousands of miles.

Oh, wow.

Six months, all the way down to the Mediterranean from source to sea.

People on our team went back and climbed Everest another six times.

Michael Brown, our filmmaker, he went back and did a ton of beautiful, beautiful films.

Kevin Cherilla, even our base camp manager, guided, I think, eight or nine blind people to the summit of Kilimanjaro and was part of uh helping Kyle Maynard get to the top of Kilimanjaro.

He's a guy with no arms and no legs, a quadruple amputee.

So everyone on the team went back and took PV's advice, and that was really powerful because it wasn't just me.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I love it.

Oh man.

So powerful.

So now I have to ask.

So we get into climbing, we end up summoning Mount Everest, you go on, if I'm not mistaken, you then went on to actually, I can't remember what the actual term is, but climb to the highest peak on all seven continents, correct?

SPEAKER_00: That's right.

Yeah.

And even did Like an eighth continent, which is Papua New Guinea, is part of a continent that some people call Oceana.

SPEAKER_01: Uh uh.

SPEAKER_00: And so I actually climbed the tallest peak in New Guinea.

Yeah.

Which is called Karsten's Pyramid, or some, I think some people call it Punkak Jaya.

But anyway, that was a really cool climb, very hard, trekking through the jungle for a week and then uh climbing this cool limestone rock face and then cruising along this very jumble jagged knife edge ridge for a long ways until we reached the summit above the jungle.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's awesome.

And all I'm sitting here thinking is leave it to Eric Weinmeyer.

Seven continents just wasn't enough.

We we needed to throw in an eighth.

SPEAKER_00: You know, yeah, throw in that eighth eighth continent.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00: Just for good measure.

SPEAKER_01: No, I totally love it.

So now, so at what point then did you decide to switch over and start kayaking?

SPEAKER_00: In a strange way, climbing had become a comfort zone for me, you know.

Like I not that it's ever easy, but it became something that I was able to succeed at and so forth.

And I love the mountains.

I think I was climbing this ice face.

My friend Rob Raker and I, and my friend Ian Ostier, we climbed this 3,000-foot vertical ice face in the Himalayas.

It's called Losar.

And we bivied out, which is meaning you sleep out on the side of the ice face on this tiny little ledge.

And we were just in these thin sleeping bags, and we only had like, you know, a package of soup each, and it was this howling wind hammering down the face from the summit and coming right down like this freezing cold air conditioning that's blowing snow on top of our sleeping bags.

And I was like so cold, I was like hallucinating.

You know, I kept dreaming about falling asleep in front of the TV, and the door had blown open in my house, and there was a winter storm happening, and it was snow blowing on top of me.

And my daughter Emma would wake me up and say, Dad, wake up.

You're you fell asleep and go to bed.

And I'd wake up and I'd be like, Oh crap, I'm on this side of this ice face.

So Rob Raker, my buddy, was a kayer, and he's like, you know, kayaking's pretty amazing.

You're kayaking in the sunshine, and you know, you can have rafts that follow you, and they can carry food and beer.

And I'm like, wow, that sounds pretty good, you know?

And even PV had talked about rivers.

He's like, you know, I think he's like, the best day in the mountains is not as good as the worst day on the river.

Now that's an exaggeration, but but it is true.

Kayaking, you know, is a little more luxurious than, you know, you don't have to carry everything on your back.

Yeah.

So that was the first uh kind of motivation.

Like, let me try this.

And then I got really intrigued because I was like, could a blind person figure out, like in the mountains, how to flourish in that riverscape when the whole language of rivers was very, you know, murky to me.

Like I didn't understand how I would do half this stuff just with my ears and what I feel under my boat and the commands that I give from my team.

Could I somehow survive, slash, or even flourish in this crazy environment where rivers, you know, have holes that are like these giant washing machines that grab your boat and suck you down, and eddies that are like currents that go up the river and there's the current going down the river, and there's an actually a fence of water between the two, and there's rocks and there's pourovers, and there's all kinds of things to navigate and figure out and see if you could understand that

through my other senses.

And so I just got really intrigued.

It seemed like a natural next step to me to try to see if I could figure out that environment.

And it was really hard, really hard, harder than climbing.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely.

So now when when you started actually doing rivers, like you know, whitewater rivers straight into kayaking, you didn't like first bridge the gap by just doing like normal whitewater rafting, like most people think of, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00: I've done a little rafting, but no, I was really interested in kayaking.

So Rob, we got back to Colorado and he's sh and he sat in this cold Colorado lake trying to teach me how to do a combat roll.

Okay.

When you flip over, how to flip yourself over and back up to the surface.

And so I had by the end of that two hours like a shaky roll.

Yep.

And I said, Hey Rob, what do you say?

We do some easy rivers.

You want to guide me down some rivers?

And so, yeah, that began us like every couple times, two or three times a year, going to these cool rivers, more intermediate, you know, rivers that were a little bit more forgiving so that we could develop our system because we didn't really know anything, you know, like how is Rob gonna guide me down the river?

Was he gonna be in front of me?

Was he gonna be behind me?

What kind of language, what kind of commands would he use?

Would I be able to hear him?

And, you know, these rapids where you're separated by a wall of water that could be 20 feet tall.

You know, so many questions, but we just basically threw ourselves into it and started sort of piecing it together.

SPEAKER_01: That's that's so awesome.

So now what kind of system did you guys end up figuring out?

Is are you because you're obviously in two separate kayaks.

Is he in front of you, behind you, to the side of you?

SPEAKER_00: Well, in skiing, well, yeah, ski is that the guy's out in front of me and he looks back over his shoulder at me from time to time, but he's also listening to my skis and he's yelling directions.

You know, he's going, turn right, turn left, and I'm following him down the mountain.

So I always thought following was way better than being in front.

So we started out with Rob and the team being in front of me, but it turns out when they would try to look back at me, it would spin their kayak and they would get sideways to the waves and they'd get knocked over.

So it wasn't very practical.

So it turns out they had to be behind me.

And then originally, what we would have is somebody out in front that would be the kind of the tip of the spear.

They'd be navigating.

Every rapid has a line, which is not very obvious.

It's like cut left and go around and then angle back into the right, and and then there's a big hole you got to avoid.

So we'd have that person navigating the line, and then I would be going, and then Rob would be behind me, and he would be guiding me, but using that person up in front, just following him.

So he didn't have to think about the line and guiding at the same time.

Wow.

That's then we developed radio systems because we got into situations where it was so loud I couldn't hear Rob.

He had to be right next to me, yelling at the top of his lungs, which was starting to become impractical as we got into bigger rapids.

And so over time, we started iterating and developing these communication systems.

We finally found this great little company.

There were just really nice people out of the UK.

And this, they developed this communication system that was uh enabling rescue teams to do like sea rescues, and it was um real-time communication.

You could talk back and forth to each other, which is called duplex communication.

And it was almost in real time, just a fraction of a second delay.

A lot of the radios in the beginning were waterproof, but yet there'd be like a half a second or a second delay.

And as we found out, that's an eternity.

You know, Rob or one of my guides is processing what to do, yelling the command to me through the radio.

And then a half a second later, I'm hearing it and trying to process what to do.

And it was just, it was too late.

It's an eternity in a rapid.

So we had to have real-time communication.

SPEAKER_01: Wow.

Yeah, I can only imagine.

Wow, that's just incredible.

And and I have to say, to the aspect of determining that it worked better for the guide to be behind you, I think that's actually um, I don't know, a really cool representation, I guess, of the level of trust that you have to have in your guide is the fact that even you know, you're not just following them, you're actually leading, you know, and uh so you're kind of heading into it first.

So that um that seems kind of amazing to me.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what I realized about blind kayaking was that you just have to be super reactive.

It was different than climbing, where I felt like climbing, you know, you're kind of asserting your will over this environment.

You're just creating this little cocoon of mental health and comfort, you know, kind of around you, even though you're in this crazy hospitable terrain and it may be crazy windy and snowy, you know, you bundle up and you and you just keep moving one foot in front of the next.

It's about like the human will interacting with this environment.

And I found in kayaking, you can't really assert your will over the river.

If the river is so powerful, the ground is moving under you in this chaotic way.

Crazy things are happening.

You're getting hammered from the left and then hammered from the right, and then, you know, getting violently knocked over in a hole and then having to roll up on the other side.

And it was it was so reactive that you would set yourself up and paddle really hard and get into position.

And then in certain ways, you just had to let the river, you had to understand the river was ultimately in control.

There's just no way to fight the power of the river.

And it was a little bit about letting go, which was hard for a German kind of control freak like myself.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, it's it's almost like I was thinking of the way you talk about the river in like a poetic sense.

It's almost like a dance.

The river is leading that dance, and you need to follow along.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's between a dance and a boxing match.

SPEAKER_01: That's not it's a dancing, boxing match.

Yeah, yeah, because it's gonna dance with you and then it's just gonna sucker punch you, you know?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.

And some of those rapids did feel like going into the ring with Mike Tyson for sure.

They were mine.

SPEAKER_01: I just can only imagine.

So now so I'm curious at what point, like how long had you been kayaking when you made the decision that you wanted to kayak the Grand Canyon?

SPEAKER_00: You know, what's interesting is I learned about process, and it really all that information, all that the template of how that process works, that growth mindset that people talk about, that process of trying to evolve and figure stuff out, you know, with you and your team, all that stuff I found out that I learned in climbing applied to kayaking.

You start out in the process with questions and no answers, and you throw yourself in with a great team of people.

That's like the first step.

And you kind of build the trust and you kind of work through all the all the crazy stuff that you got to figure out, and you innovate your way forward.

You know, you're learning along the way and sort of pioneering these new systems and technologies.

And so, anyway, I could talk on and on about what that process looks like, but ultimately that map became no barriers.

And that's really what we teach people, all our challenge folks, you know, whether they be injured vets or kids in the foster care system or people with physical challenges like myself.

You know, we teach them what that map looks like at a macro level.

And so, so yeah, kaycking was like that, where we went through this process together.

And there are these sort of guideposts along the way where you said, okay, this is where I am at this point.

It took us six years of kayaking before I felt comfortable enough to go to the Grand Canyon.

So I definitely wasn't on the fast track.

I really wanted to, you know, I could have gone to the Grand Canyon a lot sooner, but I didn't want to just survive the river.

I wanted to figure out how to flourish, how to be happy in that kind of environment, how to have joy.

And so that takes like some extra preparation to be able to not just survive by the skin of your teeth, but actually feel like somehow you're flourishing in that hostile environment.

SPEAKER_01: Exactly.

And it kind of goes back to what me and you were talking about earlier is it's not just another thing to check off.

It's truly an experience that you want to experience and you want to be prepared for it, ready for it, so you can truly enjoy it and get all that you can out of the river.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I just don't ever think you learn anything.

I mean, yes, you do, I guess.

You learn something, but it it's it's not as satisfying when you just squeak by by the skin of your teeth and you're like, got lucky there.

I mean, what does that teach you?

That you know, you happen to get lucky at that moment and squeaked your way through.

I mean, that just wasn't that interesting to me.

I'd seen people climb Everest and they just get good weather and they they get up the mountain, they come down, and but they haven't ever really been tested, you know.

And so uh I wanted to really walk away from the Grand Canyon and from my kayaking experience, having grown in some way.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely, definitely.

So now I did want to ask you because you know, this this journey down the Grand Canyon, you've you've written an entire book about it, you've made this documentary about it, which I have to say, if anybody's enjoying this interview in the slightest bit, you have to go read the book, watch the documentary.

And but so I was wondering when you went into this, did you already know in your mind that you were gonna turn it into a book and a documentary?

SPEAKER_00: No, I had no idea.

In fact, I'd written two books and I was like done with writing.

Writing is so hard, it's like pulling your hair out.

And I don't have a ton of hair left.

So it's just writing is torture because writing is thinking, you know, and and figuring out patterns and meaning behind these experiences.

And, you know, what is the sort of threads that run and weave through the tapestry of your life?

What are they about?

It's just such hard work, it's so easy to fall short.

And so it's a daunting process.

And so I had, you know, it was the head of my speakers bureau that said, You gotta write a book, Eric.

I was like, no, no, please don't make me.

Anyway, I didn't think I even had anything to say.

I was like, I've written two books.

I've I've said everything I possibly could say.

And then I went in and started writing, and 450 pages later, I was like, my publisher was telling me, Eric, please shut up.

Please end this.

This is great, but you got it, you gotta wrap this up.

So so yeah, when you dive into the into your life, into your experiences, it's hard to come back up.

You know, like it's what I love about writing and the idea of sort of processing these experiences is it's sort of like when you're kayaking and you're on the surface of the river and you're getting hammered.

And it's easy to read to think or perceive that you're, you know, everything that that that's happening in the world in reality is happening on the surface because that's how you're being affected.

You're being knocked around on the surface.

But you realize that a lot of the energy of the river is coming up from deep, deep down in the river.

You know, it's from the very bottoms of the river that, you know, currents going over rocks or going through holes or cracks or what they call sieves in the rock, or pouring over these like waterfalls.

And so it's all these currents and channels that are like hammering in all directions and flowing up and smashing against the shore and whipping you back like a monster's tail into another section of the river.

So the writing process for me was like that.

You know, it's the best writing for me is diving down under the surface and realizing that the things that affect you and motivate you and demotivate you and scare you and hold, you know, get in your way, they're so deep.

They're so deep down in the psyche.

And uh that became actually another kind of what we call element of our no barriers map, which is what we call vision, which is like how many chances do you have in life to dive down under the surface and really understand maybe who you are and what your value systems are as you try to navigate forward.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I oh my gosh.

Yeah, I I love it.

Wow.

You you kind of leave me speechless.

So I I wanted to ask you something.

I read the book, you know, a while back, and then recently I watched the documentary, The Weight of Water.

And what I enjoyed about it was the fact that the characters in the book they came to life in the documentary.

And I actually got to meet them.

And and so that was something that I thought was was really pretty phenomenal experience for me watching the documentary after having read the book.

And but there was one point in the book, and you you talked about it earlier, the echolocation.

And I have a feeling that probably most people watching the documentary wouldn't really think anything about it.

But there was one point when when you were standing there or sitting there, I don't know if you're standing or sitting, but you you you were you were kind of you know like trying to figure out the what was coming up.

And all of a sudden I heard you do a couple of you know sharp clicks with your tongue.

And I immediately was like, oh my gosh, he uses echolocation.

And it caught my attention because back in uh 2017, that was the first time I had ever even learned about echolocation.

And things progressed really quickly to the fact that I ended up going out to Los Angeles and trained with a guy, Brian Bushway, for a week developing echolocation, which completely kind of changed my life as somebody who who can't see, but then to be able to use echolocation.

So I just thought that was super awesome that that you you know use echolocation and that it was in the documentary.

And I just thought that was so cool.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Well, first of all, I'll touch on the people that you mentioned, you know, coming alive.

And yes, I had an amazing team, you know.

And the the cool part is that these people are all human beings, right?

They make mistakes, they say left instead of right.

Yep.

Sometimes it doesn't, nobody's perfect.

Yeah.

But that's been one of the, I guess, hidden gifts of being blind is that, you know, I wasn't gonna go down the Grand Canyon alone or climb Everest alone.

I was I was gonna have to rely on people.

And uh so Rob, who was the guy who helped me learn to kayak, he was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer.

And halfway through our training, he's on this drug that's saving his life, but also stripping away all his all his testosterone.

That's one of the ways they stop the prostate cancer cells from killing you, is they take away all your testosterone.

And so he's struggling.

And then Harlan was my other guide, amazing guy, just a river Yoda.

You know, his poor dad died uh when he was like a little kid, and Harlan found him in the bathtub, you know, just mouth up, water pouring down into his face, his face just blue, you know, he had passed away.

And so, you know, I you're connected to these amazing people who have all had adversity, and they've had to climb their own way out of their own wells of whatever their, you know, their suffering and adversity has been.

And to be able to connect to those people is just has been one of the greatest, most powerful things of my life and gifts, as I said.

So yeah, on the Grand Canyon, I didn't really echo locate like while I was kayaking because things are so fast and furious, and sounds are bouncing off the canyon walls and bouncing all ricocheting everywhere.

But uh definitely there's a place called Red Wall Cavern, I think, on the Grand Canyon, and it's a giant overhanging cave.

And so, yeah, Lonnie and I, who's another blind guy who kayed the Grand Canyon with me, we were echolocating, and yeah, we click.

You talked about Brian, who you learned echolocation from.

I learned it from Daniel Kish, okay, who is uh, I think taught Brian how to echolocate.

And Daniel's kind of the grandfather of it all.

Amazing.

He can click and ride a bike, and just like Brian, you know, they're amazing.

They can click away as they're riding their bike and they can say, hey, there's a building to your left, and and to your right, there's a truck.

And oh, I hear the fire hydrant over there.

You know what I mean?

They just it's such a high level that they're clicking, and sound vibrations are bouncing off of those objects and coming back at them, and they're getting tons of information.

But you know, it's like any talent where some people do it better than others, and I do it mediocre, but Daniel and Brian are masters.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, no, definitely.

They yeah, they they they are definitely the the the masters and the uh the rest of us are are trying to catch up a little bit.

But um, but yeah, no, it's it's definitely it's another the whole echolocation is is something that I think is a phenomenal, as I say, you know, to people when when I first learned about it and was was going out to to California to train with Brian and and a lot of people were very skeptical of this, you know, crazy thing.

And and then, you know, to realize, you know, it's just another tool that makes living in this world of darkness a little bit easier.

You know, and it's just another tool to use.

And if for myself, it's become, you know, a very pivotal tool for me to be able to, as I say, my cane lets me uh see the things that are right up close, and then the echolocation helps me to identify the objects far away, you know.

SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it is a great tool.

And I mean, yeah, sure, people fight it, but you know, Daniel still maybe is a little bit controversial in rehabilitation circles.

Yes.

Yes.

But uh yeah, I'm a big believer in it.

It's real, I mean, I know that I can use it like walking down the bike path.

I wrote about this in no barriers.

My house is across like a gulch and a little creek.

And I couldn't figure out ever how, you know, what environmental clue would I use to know that my house is now I'm passing it on the bike path, you know, across this gulch.

And so Daniel taught me how to listen to the trees.

Okay, you hear the trees now?

Okay, now there's a break, there's open space.

Now there's another set of trees.

Now there's a break.

Now there's another set of trees.

And now third break, and the sound is where you cut left over the river and to the back fence of your house.

Stuff like that just thrills me beyond belief when you're breaking through these little barriers in life.

SPEAKER_01: Yes.

Exactly.

And that's exactly it is it's breaking down barriers, redefining, you know, what people think is impossible, you know?

And I love it.

I love it.

So now I would love for you to share with everybody a little bit.

We've we've been talking about it throughout our conversation today.

Talk to us about no barriers.

SPEAKER_00: One of the cool things, you know, back to what PB was saying, don't make Everest the greatest thing you ever do.

So I got invited on a film project with two guys.

One is Hugh Herr, who's a double-egg amputee and runs the biomechatronics laboratory at MIT.

He builds prosthetics and tries to help the body and these prosthetics work together in more seamless ways.

And Mark Wellman, who's a paraplegic, who was the first paraplegic to climb El Capitan, basically he built a system where he was doing pull-ups up the rock face for eight days.

And so the three of us climbed this beautiful tower together.

And I realized that I had a connection with these guys.

It was a very powerful connection.

And it wasn't necessarily just the fact that we all climbed, it was the fact that we had all found our way back into the world.

You know, you get pulverized in a way by life, and then you kind of rebuild and you and you come back to the world, you reclaim your life or maybe a new life.

And I was fascinated by that process.

You know, like what does it externally look like and what does it internally look like?

And are there things that I could learn from that I could teach?

Are there sort of any like lessons or universal, you know, ideas that applied to us all as we're trying to move forward?

And so the three of us got together and started this idea we called No Barriers, which was there to help people with all kinds of challenges break through those barriers to sort of tap into what they had inside, and then ultimately to step out of themselves and figure out how do you elevate the world around you, the people around you, you know, your community, your family, whatever it may be.

And so uh it's been really powerful to, I mean, we're working with thousands and thousands of people, and we've had some great success.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Well, I absolutely love it.

I love the entire mindset behind no barriers.

I love what it's doing, and um, you know, because life can be challenging and and whether it's whether it's a disability or not, you know, we we all have these barriers in our life.

And I think that the principle behind, you know, no barriers and everything it stands for, I think is something that, in my opinion, can relate to anyone, anyone listening to this, I feel as though it's something that that can just be a benefit to all of us to remind ourselves, also.

SPEAKER_00: And that's a blessing and it's also a bit of a challenge for us as a community, because yeah, anyone can enter our no barriers community, right?

Because they're physical barriers and they're invisible barriers.

Everyone on earth has invisible barriers.

You know, whether you're uh you're trying to grow something, like as a team, you know, you're trying to build something, you're trying to create something, and you're facing all these challenges, or you have fear or anxiety, or you're a first-generation American trying to learn the language, or you're a kid in the foster care system with all kinds of psychological barriers and things that hold you back.

You know, one of the goals of no barriers is to come together as a community and say, look, at a macro level, we're all the same, right?

Like I'm blind, you're deaf, you're in a chair, you were blown up in Afghanistan.

But and yes, the way we got here, you know, are obviously specific, and we want to give respect and honor to the ways that we face challenges.

But again, at a certain level, if we all lean in and we realize our stories have such great connection and overlap, and we take those adversities, we use them as strengths, and we we lean into each other and we we problem solve our way together as a community.

We just found it so unbelievably powerful.

You know, people come to us and they say, I've been a zebra around horses, and I came to this community, and it's all zebras.

It's all people who have fought and bled their way through all kinds of things in life.

And there's a kind of a power of being part of that community and kind of helping lift each other up.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and I agree, and and I feel it's it's a fact of recognizing the fact that we as people, as human beings, there there's so much more to us below the surface, beyond the the abilities or disabilities or the looks or or whatever it is, we're all humans and we all crave that connection with one another.

And and in any you know, aspect that you can help people and facilitate that connection, I feel it does nothing but benefit everyone involved.

SPEAKER_00: And it's really begun to tap into like what people are talking about a lot today, which is inclusivity, right?

Like how do you include all kinds of people in your company and your team?

So we've had a lot of success with companies and teams really working on their own inclusiveness and what their own no barriers culture and community looks like, and then kind of using our community as a tool to learn and grow and connect with.

Because really, I mean, if you think about it, right?

It's like you have so many people who have potential to contribute to the world, but they can just as easily get shoved to the sidelines and be unproductive and live these kind of dark lives on the on the sidelines.

So, how do we support people and lift them up and give them the tools and what they need to so that they can climb as high as they possibly can go in their lives?

And we're finding that's a really powerful connection with the work that you know a lot of the country and the world is doing right now.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, awesome, awesome.

Well, Eric, I want to thank you in the most sincere way possible for being a guest on my podcast today.

You know, you you're somebody who, you know, you've done these amazing things.

You you've you've climbed to the top of Everest, you've kayaked in the Grand Canyon, but you know what I think is the most awesome about you is just simply your spirit to help people connect with other people, defy the odds, and just you know, kind of enjoy life, take on the day, and you know, as I always say, to you know, just trying to make tomorrow a little bit better than today.

And I just I love your spirit.

And I um from the bottom of my heart, you know, as somebody who who who became blind, face barriers, I think what you're doing is just really inspiring.

So thank you.

SPEAKER_00: Great.

Come on out to our event and I encourage all your audience to come out to some of our programs once COVID subsides a little bit more.

You know, we're already starting to gather again.

But yeah, come and learn about us.

And uh, if you know somebody who'd be good for the programs or you'd like to join, you know, we have an expansive definition of challenge as we just talked about.

So everyone's welcome.

SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.

And if you are interested in learning more about no barriers, I will be sure to leave a link in the episode show notes as well as links for you to check out the books that Eric has written, the documentary, and all the other crazy stuff this guy's got going on.

So for you listening, thank you so much for tuning in to another episode here on The Lowdown with Kevin Lyle.

I couldn't let today's episode end without sharing one last thing with you.

And that was something that I took away from reading Eric's book, No Barriers.

Ironically, it didn't have anything to do with Eric or all the exciting parts of the book, like going through the various rapids that make up the Grand Canyon, but it had everything to do with Eric's guide, Harlan, and most importantly, the river.

After they had finished their trek down the Grand Canyon, they had made it through the final set of rapids called Lava Falls.

Eric's wife and kids were there waiting.

That was a complete surprise to him.

While caught up in the embrace of his family and the excitement, he lost track of Harlan and he asked his wife where he was.

His wife touched his shoulder and let Eric know that Harlan had gone down to the river.

Wading out into the river, waist deep, Harlan stood with his arms outstretched and fingers splayed.

And there he stood in the river, letting the current, the flow of the water, flow through his fingers.

And it's what he said that impacted me the most.

I'll come back someday, but for now, I've got some more life to live.

The neat thing about a book is it's kind of like a song.

It can mean different things to different people.

For myself, reading this book when I did, for me, I took it to heart and I've kept that quote with me.

I immediately jotted it down and I've remembered it.

Because for me, who so many times have struggled to live this new life, and yes, even 18 years later, I still call it a new life.

This quote that Harlan spoke to the river, I was able to use in my own life.

And that for me, it was the life I used to have, my sighted life.

And I reminded myself that, Kevin, you don't have to forget about that life.

But you do have more life to live in this nuke to make the most of it.

And you know what?

One day, and it may not be till heaven, but you will have that old life back again.

Where when your eyes are open, you'll be able to see the world just like you used to.

But don't let that stand in the way of you living and enjoying this life right now.

And that's the lowdown with Heavenlow.

I hope today's episode inspired you, motivated you, and excited you to get out and enjoy life, no matter what obstacles may be standing in the way.