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Spotlights Ron Kubit '81 University of Dayton Quarterly, Fall 2005 The day after Ron Kubit said he’d guide blind mountain climbers up Mt. Kilimanjaro, he called his friend to ask, “What did I agree to?” Another friend, Erik Weinhenmayer, was the first blind person to climb Mt. Everest. He has also climbed the highest mountain on every continent and organizes trips for blind climbers from all over the world. It was he who asked Kubit to join this one. Living in Colorado, Kubit, vice-president of sales and marketing at a software and consulting company, had experience climbing “fourteen-ers” — mountains reaching 14,000 feet, but Kilimanjaro, at 19,340 feet, was by far taller than anything he’d done. Training for the climb, Kubit sometimes closed his eyes to try to understand what the blind climbers would face. The challenge overwhelmed him. “I’d wonder, ‘how do they do it?’” he said. After the eight-day hike in September, Kubit knew the answer. “Will power — pure will power. Most people said to them, ‘You can’t do that. Don’t waste your time,’” he said. “But we knew we were going to make it.” Kubit’s expedition hiked seven hours a day with the guides wearing small bells on their backpacks. Some of the blind climbers held on to their guides’ backpacks but most climbed independently. “We helped each other. We were the sighted guides but sometimes they were guiding us through their inspiration,” he said. The biggest challenge was reaching the summit. “Because the mountain is an old volcano, going up was like walking up sand and coming down was like skiing,” Kubit said. Coming down, the climbers slid uncontrollably with each step. “It was tough, but through communication we began to understand the pattern,” he said. On their way down, Kubit and his fellow climbers asked themselves what else they could do to support the blind. They founded the Kilimanjaro Blind Trust Foundation to provide support for blind or orphaned children in East Africa. —Jessica Gibson-James

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