Hundreds of times a day throughout his grueling ascent of Mount Everest, blind climber Erik Weihenmayer was plagued by self-doubt, dread and the nagging suspicion that he'd never make it to the top.
But Weihenmayer, the first blind person to scale Everest, was buoyed by encouragement from his teammates and by a Tibetan proverb that became his mantra: The nature of the mind is like water. If you don't stir it, it will remain clear.
"I just kept thinking that that's the perfect quote, because what that means is keep your mind clear. Keep your mind focused. Don't let all that doubt and fear and frustration sort of get in the way. Just take each day step by step," Weihenmayer, of Golden, Colo., said in a telephone interview from Kathmandu, Nepal.
"And when I did that, I just sort of celebrated the accomplishment of each day," he said. "Making it a little bit higher and higher up the mountain and not thinking any further than that."
Weihenmayer reached the 29,035-foot summit of the world's highest mountain on May 25 with Eric Alexander of Vail, Colo., Luis Benitez of Boulder, Colo., and Jeff Evans of Denver. Minutes earlier, 64-year-old Sherman Bull of Connecticut became the oldest climber to reach the summit.
Weihenmayer, 32, will return to Denver on Wednesday.
"I just want to step off the plane and give my wife a hug and smooch my baby, then maybe go out and pig out on something American, like cheeseburgers," he said.
For Weihenmayer, the most daunting part of the ascent came early, when the climbers picked their way through the Khumbu Icefall. It's a treacherous stretch at the start of the climb where glacial ice breaks into house-size blocks with gaping crevasses.
"It's just 2,000 feet of jumbly ice, where you're just weaving in and out of ice blocks," he said. "There's big crevasses that you're either stepping over or jumping over, and sometimes there are tiny little narrow bridges that you have to tiptoe across, or there are ladders that you are walking across."
Throughout the climb, Weihenmayer inched his way forward by following directions from the climber ahead of him and by listening to the bell tied to that climber's jacket.
"In the icefall, there were lots of times when I just thought, 'I'm not cut out for this. It's too hard. I'll never make it."'
But he did. And during the 10 minutes he spent on the summit, a fellow climber described the awesome scene that Weihenmayer, who lost his vision to a degenerative eye condition at age 13, will never see.
"I don't harp on the things that I can't do or can't experience. I try to soak up as much as I can with the senses that I have," he said.
"It's not like I'm missing out. Getting a description of the visual world through the eyes of somebody who you respect and love — teammates who you've worked so hard with to get to some place — it's like I'm getting something extra."
Weihenmayer said he tackled Everest because it's been a lifelong goal and because he loves the sense of accomplishment climbing provides.
He didn't do it to prove that the blind are capable of astounding feats, but that was a "side benefit."
"When a blind person stands on the top of the world, it's got to shatter people's perceptions," he said. "It doesn't just ask people to change their opinions about blind people. It sort of forces them to."