Dr. Karolina Pakėnaitė - Beyond Limits: The Deafblind Mountaineer on a Mission to Everest

What does it mean to climb a mountain when you cannot see the route or hear the people around you? In this talk, I share my journey from being diagnosed with progressive sight and hearing loss to becoming a mountaineer and setting my sights on the highest mountain in the world. I’ll take the audience behind the scenes of my preparation for Everest — from training and expeditions in some of the world's most challenging environments to navigating the practical and psychological challenges of mountaineering as a deafblind person. I’ll share stories from my adventures, including Everest Base Camp, and explain how I communicate, navigate and stay safe in environments where most climbers rely heavily on vision and hearing. The talk will also explore the technology I am developing alongside my research colleagues, including a haptic wearable that I will field-test during my upcoming expedition to Dhaulagiri VII. The wearable uses vibrational cues instead of sight or sound to communicate information between climbing teams, offering a potential new approach to accessibility in challenging environments. Ultimately, this is a story about pushing beyond assumptions and redefining what is possible. It is about adventure, resilience, innovation and the importance of not allowing other people's expectations to determine the limits of your own ambitions. I am a deafblind mountaineer, researcher and adventurer preparing for a historic mission: to become the first deafblind person in the world to summit Mount Everest. I was diagnosed with Usher syndrome in my late teens, a genetic condition causing progressive sight and hearing loss. Rather than allowing this to define what was possible, I began challenging myself through endurance sport, climbing and high-altitude mountaineering. My journey has taken me from running marathons and ultras to climbing in the Himalayas, including reaching Everest Base Camp in 2023. My Everest expedition is now planned for May 2027, with Dhaulagiri VII (7,246m) in Nepal in autumn 2026 forming an important part of my preparation. Alongside my adventures, I am a computer scientist and researcher specialising in accessibility and tactile technology. I have developed technology that translates visual information into tactile images and am currently field-testing an innovative haptic wearable, co-developed with research colleagues in Canada, which could help make communication and navigation more accessible in high-altitude environments.