A Couple Of High Climbers

By Carole Buia

All day Ellie Weihenmayer's phone rang with updates of her husband's ascent up the white monster called Everest. But the reports did little to ease her nerves. It had been almost two weeks since she last heard his voice, and she'd spent too many sleepless nights chasing away fears of avalanches and infinitely deep crevasses. Then, at 10 p.m. on May 24, the news came: Erik had reached the summit. "My friends and I broke out in celebration," recalls Ellie.

Yet moments later, the fear returned. A mountain climber herself, Ellie knew she could not rest until Erik was safe in Camp 4. At 3 a.m., she finally heard his voice. "It's the best day of my life!" he yelled. "Except, of course, our wedding day."

Ellie once told Erik that "while some girls dream of a big house with a white picket fence, my dream is to lead a life that is extraordinary, never ordinary." Shortly after uttering those words, she found herself climbing past howling monkeys in Africa to reach a 12,000-ft. plateau on Mount Kilimanjaro, where she and Erik wed in the summer of 1997.

"He was the first blind person I ever met," she says. "I fell in love the second I saw him. He had so much confidence and flair for living." Erik first met Ellie Reeve in Arizona, when he was interviewing for a job at Phoenix Country Day School, where she taught. Though she later wondered what sharing her life with a sightless person would be like, she quickly realized that Erik was well equipped to cope with his dark world. "He does things by instinct. When he walks, he doesn't lift his feet, he feels the floor," says Ellie. "The only thing that's been hard for Erik is getting used to Emma's new toys--she leaves them all over the place." When it comes to posing treacherous obstacles, the Himalayas have nothing on a toddler.

--By Carole Buia