I went on to graduate from high school and then from Boston College, where I got a degree in English and communications. I ended up teaching middle-school English and coaching wrestling at Phoenix Country Day School in Arizona. That’s where I met and fell in love with Ellie Reeve. When she learned about my passion for mountains and adventure, she supported me wholeheartedly, and I continued climbing, and my confidence in climbing led to other adventures—skydiving and paragliding, skiing, and ice climbing.

But it was the challenge of big mountain summits that most intrigued me. Between 1995 and 2000, urged on by the Phoenix climbing community, I trained hard, developed strong teams, and started climbing serious peaks.

In fact, Ellie and I got married at thirteen thousand feet on the Shira Plateau of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa. Ellie didn’t have a wedding dress, so we wrapped her up in Tanzanian fabric we’d been using as a tablecloth!

These expeditions all prepared me for an even greater challenge: Mount Everest. Standing 29,029 feet, it is the tallest mountain in the world. At the time, one hundred and seventy people had died while attempting to climb it. And on May 25, 2001, after climbing through snowstorms and lightning storms, I stood on the summit. No blind man had ever stood there before.

For months my teammates and I had traveled together as one, our lives inseparable. I’d pushed past my known physical limits, learning much about what my body could endure and what my mind could achieve. Climbing experts had doubted us and questioned my abilities. But nineteen of us from our team had made it to the summit. We were the most from a single team to reach the top of the world in a single day.

Needless to say, I was surprised when, before we had even made it back down to base camp, our expedition leader, Pasquale—“PV”—grabbed me by the shoulder and stopped me. I felt him stare into my face for a long time.

“Don’t make Everest the greatest thing you ever do,” he pronounced, and patted me on the back.