CLIMBING HIGH
Blindness can’t stop retired NASA engineer from conquering Machu Picchu
Michael McCulloch had learned about blind people “dying from inactivity.”
Physical inactivity leads to most chronic illnesses, according to a 2012 study, so McCulloch wasn’t wrong in his fear of falling into long, stagnant periods after retirement.
It wasn’t just the retired life that gave the electrical engineer at NASA pause. He was also dealing with full blindness and idle hands (or feet).
He began losing his vision in his late 20s, but he had known it was coming for years — his mother and grandmother went blind due to glaucoma. In 2006, he was declared legally blind after degenerative glaucoma caused him to lose the ability to see everything but some light and shadows.
Suddenly, McCulloch couldn’t drive; he couldn’t watch TV; he couldn’t walk out his front door and find his way unassisted.
“I fell into a deep depression,” the 64-year-old said. “But I heard about Erik Weihenmayer, the only blind person to summit Mount Everest. That helped me get up and leave my house and become more connected with blind support groups.”
Before he lost full vision, McCulloch saw pictures of Machu Picchu, the ancient Peruvian city atop Machu Picchu Mountain. He also saw the Inca Trail, a 27-mile trek toward the city with a 14,000-foot summit at Dead Woman’s Pass.
In 2018, he made the decision to hike it — even though he couldn’t see it.
It took a year of preparation: finding the right sighted guides, getting in shape, traveling to Colorado to train at a higher elevation. He also hired a documentary crew to follow him and his guides on the fourday trek.
The team
Robert Harrington, a producer for Houston-based Bella.Media, said his decision to document McCulloch’s Machu Picchu hike was a turning point in his life, too.
In the summer of 2018, Harrington was overweight and unable to be on his feet longer than four hours, let alone four days. He didn’t know if he would be able to follow along with a camera, but he fell in love with McCulloch’s story. And the job that started as a passion project evolved into a passion for healthy living and fitness. The date set to leave was June 9, 2019, and he knew McCulloch was relying on him to be there.
“It was motivation to get out of bed,” Harrington said. “I wasn’t going to miss it.”
McCulloch started working with with Achille’s International, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping disabled individuals compete and thrive in sports and activities, years before he decided to train for Machu Picchu.
In the 10 years between his complete vision loss and retirement in 2017, McCulloch ran 10K and 5K races, and participated in Ski for Light, an annual event that gives visually impaired individuals a chance to experience cross-country skiing. He’s a regular kayaker and can rock climb with the aid of a sighted guide.
Achille’s International connected him with two of his sighted guides. He chose the third, Janice Koppang, after meeting her through Ski for Light.
Being a guide for a visually impaired person is an acquired skill, Koppang said. Not everyone calls out instruction in the same way, and you don’t change your style to adhere to the person’s preference.
It’s one thing to navigate the narrow trail of Machu Picchu as a sighted person — it’s something else to listen to calls from three separate people and trust that your lifted foot will again find dirt you cannot see.
The hike
Once there, the trail guide confessed that it was his first time leading a blind person on the Inca Trail.
They trained for the hike to take longer than a typical hiking group and padded their breaks with extra time. Then they padded McCulloch’s knee: Just six months before leaving for Peru, he tore his right meniscus. He had torn the same one 15 years earlier, which led to surgery and physical therapy. But he knew it would derail the trip if he tried to fix it right away.
“I put a brace on it, taped it up, took pain medication,” he said. “I wasn’t sure the hike would ever happen.”
Still, he managed. Even when the rocky trail narrowed to walkways less than 4 feet wide, the yearlong training worked and he followed his guides’ instructions.
McCulloch said he could tell they were approaching the summit when it became harder to breathe.
“It was midday, and I didn’t realize we were there, but I kept getting more winded. I was huffing and puffing, so I knew we had to be getting close,” he said. “I wasn’t told we were there, but then I heard everyone clapping and cheering.”
Others who passed his group on the trail waited on the top to celebrate the achievement with him. He posed for photos and breathed from an oxygen tank for 30 minutes.
The background of the photos are beautiful. But for McCulloch, it wasn’t about the view — it was about experiencing the trail along the way.
McCulloch’s injured meniscus proved too painful for the descent, and he had to be carried by two porters for a portion of the hike down.
No matter the distance, the injury or McCulloch’s eyesight, the group made the 27-mile trip in four days, which is considered typical.
“He was inspiring people before he went on the trip,” said Harrington, the photographer. “And he’s continuing to inspire people with what he did. He, unassisted, went up 14,000 feet and did Dead Woman’s Pass on day two with guides calling out steps. No one had to carry him at that point, but he did a lot on his own.”
The aftermath
After the trip, McCulloch hiked Galapagos Island with Koppang and friends. On July 22, he had surgery on his torn meniscus.
McCulloch goes to physical therapy three times a week at Memorial Hermann Ironman Sports Medicine Institute. He’s at the point where he can easily do leg presses, calf raises, goblet squats and knee-up exercises under the direction of Dorcus Copa, a physical therapist who also works with the Dash.
McCulloch barely winced when a series of small needles were inserted around his knee, a technique called dry needling that causes microscopic damage and inflammation, which spurs healing properties in the muscles around the knee.
He has to endure the physical therapy and rehabilitation though. His next adventure, Ski for Light, will be in early February in Casper, Wyo.
As for the documentary, Harrington is in postproduction. It should be ready to view in January, said Harrington, who lost 40 pounds in preparation for the trip and has formed a workout group to stay accountable and active since his return.
“It’s hard to track how many people were impacted by (McCulloch’s) decision to do the hike,” said Harrington. “At least a half-dozen people are more active now than they were before (he) decided to hike Machu Picchu.”