One place where they commonly fail is the trek from the South Summit to Hillary Step. Here climbers face a knife-edge ridge made of ice, snow, and fragmented shale—10,000 feet straight down into Tibet on one side, 7,000 feet down into Nepal on the other. The ridge must be crossed with tiny, cautious steps and a good ice ax. Erik Weihenmayer, who made it all the way to the top, knows of the unnerving sound of rock chipping off, plunging into the void.

Erik would have heard this sound more crisply than nearly any other climber, for he was the first blind man to reach the summit of Everest. That isn’t Erik’s only achievement. On August 20, 2008, he reached the top of Carstensz Pyramid in Indonesia, the tallest mountain in Australasia. This completed his goal of reaching the Seven Summits, a group of imposing peaks, one from each of the world’s seven continents. Totally blind since the age of thirteen, Erik has overcome one mountain-sized challenge after another.1

It all started with Alaska’s Mount McKinley. A friend challenged Erik to climb the peak with him. Given Erik’s impediment, the idea seemed crazy. Since the mountain is filled with massive, man-swallowing crevices, climbers who take it on must be tightly fastened to a rope. As Erik recalled later, “Even when the wind was howling and I wouldn’t be able to hear footsteps crunching in front of me, I’d have the direction of the rope to follow.”2

I love stories like Erik’s. In my mind’s eye I can see myself on that mountain: the wind howling, icy dust filling my lungs, massive crevasses yawning before me—and I confess that my knees get a little weak. At that point my cozy chair in the family room feels awfully good to me.

But I can’t help but think about the rope. How important is that piece of equipment to mountain climbers? Vitally important. It’s the difference between death and glory. The rope is a lifeline bonding a half-dozen adventurers who must have utter faith in its strength.

The rope is even more important to a blind man such as Erik. All his information comes through his elevated senses of hearing and touch. He and his friends are all tethered to the rope, and he feels the tension of their movement as they climb upward. When someone slips, his hands instantly clutch the line, and through it he knows what is happening and sets himself for danger. The rope is his guide in the midst of a perilous journey, the one thing that will not fail him when he is uncertain of his next step.

The Rope of God’s Love