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Blind Seattle-Area Marathoner To Attempt Summiting North America's Tallest Peak

Courtesy Dave Marcy
Bruce Stobie is seen on a recent climb to Camp Muir on Mount Rainier.

Bruce Stobie may be blind, but he’s getting ready to do something that most of us with perfect eyesight would never attempt. On June 10, he’s setting out on a three-week round-trip expedition to climb North America’s tallest peak, Denali.

Stobie grew up in Des Moines, Washington, loving to climb. But everything changed on Nov. 5, 1983. He was one of nine college kids packed into a truck driving through the Cascades when the driver lost control. The last thing Stobie ever saw was the truck flying into the air. He smashed, face-first, into the roll bar of the vehicle before being tossed out.

“When it happened, I thought I was going to die,” Stobie said. “[It] detached the retinas in both eyes, and the sight loss was pretty much instantaneous.”

Read/listen to the entire story on our companion site, Quirksee.org >>>

In July 2017, Ashley Gross became KNKX's youth and education reporter after years of covering the business and labor beat. She joined the station in May 2012 and previously worked five years at WBEZ in Chicago, where she reported on business and the economy. Her work telling the human side of the mortgage crisis garnered awards from the Illinois Associated Press and the Chicago Headline Club. She's also reported for the Alaska Public Radio Network in Anchorage and for Bloomberg News in San Francisco.