This month we are featuring Haider Ali. Haider is a young man from Islamabad, Pakistan who is being awarded a Reach Scholarship. His application demonstrated that he is relentless in his pursuit to Reach higher and to challenge people’s perceptions of his capabilities as well as his desire to Elevate the people in his community. […]
Meagan Houpt was born with only half a heart. Immediately after her parents brought her home from the hospital she began turning blue and they rushed right back. She was subjected to numerous heart catheters and tests that eventually revealed her diagnosis: hypoplastic left heart syndrome, and transposition of the great arteries, ASD and VSD. […]
Sin City conjures up images of high-stakes gambling, neon lights, and hedonistic partying. But on a recent visit, after speaking to a group of HR professionals at the glamorous Cosmopolitan Hotel, I was ready to get outside and climb in the gorgeous Red Rocks, just outside the city. “Crimson Chrysalis” goes 1,000 feet straight up […]
For most people, swimming the Au’Au Channel, a 9.5 mile gap between the Hawaiian islands of Maui and Lānaʻi, would be a lifetime bucket list challenge. But Skylar Webb has swam it twice in both directions – as well as the Pailolo Channel, a rougher and more challenging open passage from Maui to Molokai. Even […]
La Pomme d’Or – The Golden Apple. Situated in cold and mysterious Quebec, this 1,200-foot ice face is daunting, featuring hard, Grade 5 ice, and a mixed rock and ice pitch. It has turned into a bit of a “great white whale” for me – two attempts have yet to get me to the summit, […]
Jody Peterson and I share some similarities; we both take action, we love involving our families in our pursuit of adventures, and we both happen to be blind. Like Jody, I also battled with accepting my condition as a teen and pushed away help. It wasn’t until I accepted blindness as part of my life […]
I’ve got my eyes (so to speak) on some big, cold mountain objectives this year, so time on ice has been a focus. To put in some training on thin, desperate ice, I called up my buddy Ian Osteyee, who haunts the ephemeral smears of the Adirondacks outside Keene, NY. Ian is a Marine like […]
While I was in the Middle East to give a talk, I knew I had to visit Petra, Jordan – one of the “New Seven Wonders of the World” and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Petra is famous for its 2000 year-old history. Established in the 4th century BC, it was ruled and built by […]
When I was a kid I was fascinated by the movie Lawrence of Arabia with Peter O’Toole. In the film, set during the First World War, T.E. Lawrence teamed up with the Arabs to lead an army across the arid brick-red sand of the desert to launch a rebellion on the Turks. After watching the […]
I met Angie Shireman in 2015 at a No Barriers ‘What’s Your Everest’ event. She had been through a hard decade, having undergone a preventative double mastectomy and several reconstructive surgeries. In 2014, she was diagnosed with a rare brain disorder and underwent two deep brain surgeries to correct the condition. Throughout this tumultuous time, […]
