GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK - The sun had set 30 minutes ago and shadows were growing as the small group of hikers approached the South Kaibab trailhead at the Grand Canyon's South Rim.
You could hear the group long before you could see it as the lead hiker called out obstacles, gave directions and offered encouragement. By the time you could see headlamps bobbing along the switchbacks of the last few yards of the steep climb, it was dark.
The hikers also started their day in the shadows, heading down the trail at dawn. Their destination: the Colorado River. They intended to go down and back in a day. A little more than 14 hours later, the grueling trek was over and despite being exhausted, the hikers were happy with what they accomplished over more than 12 miles.
There was a reason this group was so noisy compared to most others on the trail. Two of its members are blind and needed those verbal cues to navigate the precarious footing.
The group was one of four with the Southern Arizona Association for the Visually Impaired that made the trip to the bottom and back on May 16. Having adopted the nickname Caboose, the group that finished in darkness was the last of the SAAVI hikers on the trail that day.
But for Gabriela Orpinel, it didn’t matter how long it took. She had accomplished something that just a few years ago she could not have imagined possible.
“It was so hard,” Orpinel, 42, said. “I’m just so grateful to the group I was in. They kept me going and going. You have no idea how many times I just wanted to lay down in the dirt, but they just kept saying, ‘Come on, you can do this, you’re strong.’ It’s an amazing feeling.”
Orpinel learned she had glaucoma in 1989 but the disease really began to take its toll on her sight in recent years. As her vision worsened, she became discouraged and disengaged from the world.
“I literally sat in my room 24/7,” she said. “My children would leave for school in the morning, come back at 3 or 3:30 and find me in my room. I hadn’t eaten, hadn’t showered. I thought that was it as far as my life went.”
She didn’t know organizations like SAAVI offered resources and support for people in her position.
Mike Armstrong is health and wellness coordinator for SAAVI. His mission is to show others that being visually impaired doesn’t mean they can’t be active and fit.
Armstrong models the behaviors he teaches.
He was an active person before he lost his sight 20 years ago. Now totally blind, he remains an avid hiker — he completed the 800-mile Arizona Trail and did a rim-to-rim Grand Canyon trek in a single day — personal trainer and martial arts instructor.
Since he has been with SAAVI, Armstrong has organized several Grand Canyon expeditions, including a trip halfway down the South Kaibab Trail the week before the trip that included Orpinel.
The organization offers less strenuous activities, but the Grand Canyon trips serve as examples of the kind of things that are possible.
“It might be the thing to motivate some guy who’s been blind for five years sitting in his house thinking he can’t do anything anymore,” Armstrong said. “It might be the thing to get him off his butt and go to school to learn what he needs to get back out there.”
For more on this story, click here.
For more inspiring stories, LIKE the Humankind Facebook page.
