Baldy for the Blind By Author, Mountain Climber, and now featured in the documentary film: Baldy for the Blind: Chris Lynch
A group of sight guides help lead the blind hikers on a training hike.
On a clear day – and from the right location, you can see Mount Baldy (aka: Old Mount San Antonio) looming like a sentinel east of the Los Angeles skyline. At over 10,000 feet, it’s the highest point in Los Angeles County, and the third highest peak in Southern California.
It’s also one of the most dangerous.
Which is why it makes even more amazing that anyone would venture to train and lead a group of blind, inexperienced hikers to its summit. But that’s exactly what our guest today did.
The victorious group of blind hikers and sight guides on the summit of Mount Baldy after four long months of training.
His name is Christopher J. Lynch, and he was a long-time South Bay resident until several years ago when he and his wife moved to Tennessee. He’s also an experienced mountain climber who’s summited Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Whitney, as well as trekking to Mount Everest Base Camp. For all his adventures however, he counts Baldy for the Blind as his greatest accomplishment. What’s even better; Baldy for the Blind is now a documentary film that will be premiering at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood on July 2nd. - so, we can all live the experience with him!
Lianne:
Christopher, how did you first get into leading hikes? I’m refer to sighted people at this point.
Christopher:
I joined the LA Meet-up hiking group initially just to train for Kili. After I summited Kili, I realized that I really enjoyed hiking with groups and eventually started leading hikes myself.
L: Where did the notion for leading a group of blind hikers come from?
C: I noticed on some of the hikes I did with other leaders, that they tended to go at their own pace, and that some people got left behind. So, I started a series of hikes called, “Slow Poke to the Summit.” I took a slower pace, more frequent breaks, and most importantly; kept tabs on my hikers to make sure no one was falling behind.
L: How did the ‘Slow-Poke’ hikes go?
C: Fantastic! I was able to lead dozens of people to summits – including Mount Baldy, who never thought they could ever do it. It was very satisfying.
L: And that success led to Baldy for the Blind?
C: Yes. I’m the kind of person who tends to move the goal posts in my life. So, I thought, “Hey, if I can lead these people, why can’t lead blind people as well?” I approached the Los Angeles Braille Institute with a plan and a time-table and before you know it, I had eleven visually impaired students who I was now in charge of training and leading for the next four months.
L: How did you go about it?
C: The first thing I did was to use my connections with LA Meet-up to enlist a group of other hikers to function as ‘Sight-Guides’ because I knew I couldn’t do it myself and that it was going to take a team effort. Thankfully, I received a good response and the Braille institute was able to train us in the techniques we needed to use. It was at this time that I was approached by Drea Castro, who is an accomplished actress and now a filmmaker. She recognized the potential of such a unique story and before long we were hitting the trails with cameras documenting it for posterity.
L: How did those training hikes go?
C: Very well. I’ve hiked so much in the area that I knew what trails would work for us and which would not. We started out with an easy 3-mile hike with 300 feet of elevation, and then continued to build on that.
L: What were the blind hikers like?
C: Far different than I expected. Like most people, I thought that all blind people are totally blind and had been from birth…which is not the case. They each had varying degrees of visual impairment, and only one hiker had been blind from birth with the remainder having lost their vision within the last 5-7 years. They also lost their sight from a variety of factors.
L: Such as?
C: One woman, Melissa, lost her sight as a result of having Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis as a child. Another man, Ward, lost his vision due to an infection that destroyed the optic nerve in his brain. And still another woman, Odet, went blind after contracting a blood infection as a result of giving birth to her daughter.
L: Quite a mixed bag of maladies.
C: Yes, and that’s not all. The group was as diverse as could be. We had White, African American, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, and even Filipina as hikers. As far as former professions, we had an architect, as well as a custom tailor who sewed all the costumes for the Motown greats such as Smokey Robinson, The Temptations, even the Jackson Five.
L: Christopher, this sounds like such an incredible story. How can the readers of Palos Verdes Pulse see the Baldy for the Blind documentary?
C: By visiting the link listed below and purchasing tickets to the film’s premiere on July 2nd. Your readers should plan to buy tickets ASAP, as we are getting a lot of attention and the film may sell out. We’ll have a Q&A with myself and the filmmaker immediately following the performance.
The film is also captioned, and a sign-language interpreter will be on stage with us to aid those with hearing impairment. Also, we have descriptive audio that allows visually impaired individuals to listen in with either the theater’s assistive Listening Devices, or with the Actiview mobile app. We’ve tried to cover all bases.
L: Thank you Christopher for sharing this with us today, and I’m sure the readers of PV Pulse would love to experience the chronicling of this amazing adventure.
Christopher Lynch is a Southern California native and freelance writer. His debut novel, One Eyed Jack, a hard-boiled crime thriller about a professional blackmailer, was a 2013 Shamus Award finalist, and a 2014 Writers Digest Honorable Mention for Genre Fiction. Eddie: The Life and Times of America's Preeminent Bad Boy, the memoir of Ken Osmond, the actor who played Eddie Haskell on Leave it to Beaver, is one of the highest rated celebrity biographies on Amazon.
He is also an avid cyclist and a mountain climber with successful summits of Mount Whitney, Mount Shasta, Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, Mount Kalapatar in Nepal, and has recently completed a trek to Mount Everest Base Camp.
He counts as one of his greatest accomplishments the successful training and leading of nine blind hikers to the summit of 10,000 foot Mount Baldy, the highest point in Los Angeles County, and the third highest peak in Southern California. A documentary film is being made of the adventure and you can view a trailer at: http://www.baldyfortheblind.com
He enjoys giving back to the writing community by offering free Self-Publishing seminars. He also taught creative writing at a maximum security prison north of Los Angeles. You can see more of Christopher J. Lynch’s writing at his website: http://www.christopherjlynch.com
