Black Diamond Presents: Onsight

Photographer: Janelle Dransfield Athlete: Seneida Biendarra Location: Utah

Black Diamond Presents: Onsight

Featuring blind athlete and BD Product Developer Seneida Biendarra on her emotional journey to gold at the 2023 Paraclimbing World Cup in Salt Lake City.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 17, 2024

When her vision began to deteriorate, Seneida found solace in climbing. But it wasn't until she found climbers that she finally learned to open up and accept her disability. This film by Janelle Dransfield and Rachel Ross features blind athlete and Black Diamond Product Developer Seneida Biendarra, as she finds herself embracing her journey on a worldwide competition stage.

Black Diamond Presents: Onsight

Film: Janelle Dransfield and Rachel Ross

Approaching the crag sets the bar for the day—traversing the rocks, trees and drops of a trail isn’t just a challenge, it also provides feedback for how well my vision will cooperate. Each step is carefully selected based on a tiny tunnel of vision that is an often-unreliable navigator. As my eyes scan back and forth to expand my range of sight, I collect information through a small golf-ball-sized periscope that displays 5° of the world at a time. What I can see is clear on a good day, sometimes veiled by flashing dots or static, but useful enough to see the width of the trail and find footing in steep terrain. Sometimes, my optic nerve swells, and the tunnel of sight constricts and dims. On these days there’s no opportunities to look out at the vistas, 100 percent of my attention is dedicated to glimpsing the next spot to place my foot. Search, step, balance, repeat—until it’s time to climb.

For a while, I wasn’t sure if I’d meet other climbers like me. I had wanted to; I just didn’t know how. It took a mentor pushing me to attend the Adaptive Climber’s Festival at the Red River Gorge for me to finally start accepting my disability through the lens of a sport that had previously helped me escape it. At ACF, I was surrounded by the only people I’d ever met who were challenged in the same way I was, who had their own stories of loss or feeling isolated by their disability. In this community, I reveled in the freedom that came with “saying the quiet part out loud.” Those honest conversations broke through eight years of walls I had built up, and I finally found the words to tell my story.