[Editor's note: The following post comes courtesy of Erik Weihenmayer, a former middle school teacher turned professional mountain climber, and the first blind person to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. Erik is also a CareerConnect mentor as well as author of Touch the Top of the World: A Blind Man's Journey to Climb Farther than the Eye Can See. This summer Erik is starring in ABC's Expedition Impossible. You can catch the show Thursday nights at 9 EST. Learn more about Erik at his website, http://www.touchthetop.com/.]
My boldest decision of the year was entering a new reality TV show, produced by Mark Burnett, called Expedition Impossible—an adventure race across the ancient kingdom of Morocco. No blind person had ever done anything like this, and it was a huge risk for the TV executives to even accept me.
My team—longtime climbing partner Jeff Evans, twice-wounded war veteran Aaron Isaacson, and myself—tested our skills against twelve other teams to see if we could out-think and out-suffer them on the way to the victor's cup. For a month, we raced across scorching deserts and frigid mountains, forged through chest-deep rivers down narrow canyon gorges, kayaked raging whitewater, and rode Arabian stallions and camels across the rugged countryside. Galloping a spitting, biting camel across the Sahara Desert as it puked green vomit and tried to throw me on my head may have been scarier than climbing Mt. Everest blind. Every day of the competition was a massive reach through adversity, and some days, to be honest, I was just happy to have survived.
In an ad leading up to the show, a woman from another team says, "I heard there is a blind guy competing, so I know we'll beat at least one team." Check out the series, which will run on Thursdays throughout the summer, to see if her prediction plays out. Also visit my blog to get behind the scenes stories about each episode. And be sure to cheer on Team No Limits throughout this grueling adventure!
