Jason Mitschele always wanted to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. He used to live in Africa and knew others who had made the assent. Blind from birth, Jason thought climbing was a lofty dream, but he is not the kind of guy to hold back.
As a Federal Crown Prosecutor with the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, Jason reached out to his friend Dwyane King, a past police officer and special investigator with Toronto Police Service, to ask if he would be his sighted guide.
Dwayne laughed, thinking Jason was joking, but a week or two later said, “I’m in.”
“Initially, it was just the two of us with a plan to climb in 2018 or 2019,” explains Jason. “Then someone suggested we fundraise to create awareness too. We created an account called ‘Team Limitless.’”
Before they knew it, 14 people with sight loss and sighted guides signed up, ready to climb.
While they postponed the climb for a year to get more momentum and more funding, they raised $20K, found a tour agency to take them on this incredible adventure, and made the deposit. Then the world came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Back in the day, Jason worked as a camp counsellor at CNIB’s summer camp at Bowen Island Lodge in British Columbia (now defunct), and it gave him a new outlook on life.
“Because of your visual impairment, you’re often left out of sporting events, sitting out of gym class, and not playing on teams,” Jason says. “You miss the pleasure and the thrill of individual and team sports. I was never invited to be on a team because no one thought I could do it.”
His experience at Bowen Island gave him true exposure to the joy of sport, introducing him to sports like waterskiing, running, tandem biking, etc.
“I think most blind kids experienced what I did,” says Jason. “If you don’t see someone running or biking or swimming, how would you know how to do it? Until someone actually took me under their wing, I really didn’t know. Camp helped me with all these things.”
With that in mind, Jason connected with Terry Kelly and Corey Braun, two fellow CNIB Lake Joe Advisory Board members who are also deeply involved in CNIB Lake Joe’s Camp Abilities program.
“As someone who is blind, it’s hard to learn as part of a team,” explains Jason. “You need to have that one-on-one time, so you can learn how to run and swim properly. There’s no other program like Camp Abilities.”
The decision was made to donate the $20K raised to climb Mount Kilimanjaro to instead help send ten youth to CNIB Lake Joe’s Camp Abilities program and support the blind hockey pilot program in partnership with Canadian Blind Hockey Association.
Now a father of an energetic nine-month-old son, Jason wants to give kids with sight loss the best in sport.
“I was involved in the Joe’s Team Triathlon in 2013 and 2014 and all of the required training. I knew how to do it, but not properly,” Jason confides. “I perfected at the age of 40 what I should have been perfecting as a teenager. I want kids to get training in a one-on-one environment for an actual competition. That brings out the best in people. And they will experience things they never thought they could.”
With summer fast approaching, Jason and Dwayne look forward to attending the Camp Abilities program and lacing up their skates with kids who were able to sign up thanks to Team Limitless.
There’s talk that the remaining Team Limitless members may try to go to Mount Kilimanjaro in 2023, but Jason believes that Team Limitless isn’t just the 14 people involved in 2020. It can be a growing, generational program that will evolve with the Camp Abilities attendees of 2022. Jason has dreams of climbing the mountain with his son.
For more information, watch this wonderful Team Limitless video and read more about the CNIB Lake Joe’s Camp Abilities program. You can also donate to help send a kid to camp!