HE HAS climbed to the top of Queensland’s highest peaks but not for the tranquillity or to escape the chatter of everyday life.
Ricky Ellis is profoundly deaf and has been since birth.
He can feel the wind blow and the heat of the sun, but his world is silent.
Being deaf doesn’t exclude him from death defying experiences like the time he climbed a New Zealand peak and was caught in a blizzard.
He was climbing the glaciers on Mount Rolleston when a storm hit.
“Rocks were hitting my helmet while I dug into the snow on a steep slope with an ice axe,” he said.
“I was climbing with a hearing partner. He looked up and as I turned around as a huge piece of ice was breaking off.
“I yelled run and we ran, blocks of ice as big as cars went past.
“We ran hundreds of metres on the glacier with crevasses underneath our feet.
“When we stopped, he turned and said ‘I didn’t know you could yell’.”
The 45-year-old has also summited Mount Damavand, Asia’s highest volcanic mountain and one of seven on his list to conquer.
He keeps fit running ultra marathons, that’s over 100 kilometres from start to finish, and climbing every weekend.
An inability to hear doesn’t affect any of these activities but there’s something else Ricky does that is remarkable because he is deaf.
He’s a prospector who uses a gold detector to find gold.
Gold detectors work through sound fed into headphones to the prospector, letting them know the precious metal is close by.
If Ricky can’t hear, how does he know gold is there?
“People were in awe because the gold detector in full volume is very loud,” he said.
“I can only feel 100 decibels and learned to tell the difference in the ground.”
He learns and adapts so he can live the life he wants to live.
His gold prospecting started in 2019.
“After climbing all over Europe and coming back to Australia, I had to find something new and decided on gold detecting,” he said.
“In the first four weeks I found just over an ounce of gold.
“I took up the challenge of using the machine with headphones that produce only sound.
“With my deafness, I put the volume up to a maximum of 20 on the [detector] and trialled with a Steelphase audio enhancer.
“On full volume it provides large sound vibrations and my brain recognised the sound.
“A hearing person can hear me from some distance if I pulled my headphones away from my ears.”
At first Ricky struggled with side effects from the constant vibrations.
“My brain would be ringing in my ear from the vibrating sound and I had trouble sleeping at night,” he said.
“It took some time for me to get used to the vibration sound and able to tolerate it.
“I can now drop the volume down. It’s a learning experience and I am doing much better now.”
He said there’s still ‘plenty of gold out there’ and it’s now worth an average $150 per gram.
Figuring out vibrations is one thing, climbing mountains while unable to communicate with other climbers is another.
“Communication is important with climber partners because we depend on each other for our lives,” he said.
“I tug on the rope to communicate when we can’t see or hear each other.
“I can’t hear anything and that includes rocks or avalanches.
“I started climbing with new hearing friends because there are very few deaf that enjoy climbing in the world, I developed my own methods to stay safe and in communication.”
His love of climbing doesn’t end with recreational pursuits, he’s worked on high rises too.
“I was the first deaf person to get an IRATA license as a Rope Access Tech. I worked in Perth for nine months on high rise buildings before moving to Brisbane,” he said.
“I am a construction worker by trade.”
He’s climbed Mount Barney in the Scenic Rim at least 40 times and Flinders Peak 239 times.
Most of his climbs are done solo. He said few climbers wanted to join him, possibly due to his deafness.
He’s been climbing for 25 years but don’t tell his mum.
“I started hunting when I was 17, I took the bus to the mountains and when I had a car my passion turned to climbing,” he said.
“My mother was worried but I made it on my own and have been climbing ever since.
“I haven’t told my parents about climbing, it’s just something I enjoy as a hobby.”
