No depth perception and it’s effect on climbing

I found out about two years ago that I have little to no depth perception. Around the time you’re a toddler your brain develops the communication link between both of your eyes and mine decided it wouldn’t. A head injury as a kid? Maybe.

Anyhow I’ve always wondered what it’s like to climb with depth perception. To be honest I’m not sure if I have a true concept of what “depth” is supposed to look like. I think I’ve just gotten accustomed to gauging distance through size of objects in an environment.

What skills am I potentially lacking with my climbing? For example I’m pretty bad at estimating the length of a route but I’m not sure if that’s linked with this condition. What does looking down several pitches to the ground really feel like?

Just looking for any climber out there who had depth perception at one point in their life and lost it and who feels like they actually experience climbing differently now.

I used to work with a guy who made it pretty far in pro-am surfing with one eye- he'd lost it as a child to a firework. It made me realize I took my eyesight and depth perception for granted. Just hanging out with him prompted me to try to do things with one eye, like I would cover one eye and try to drive a car or something, to try to see what his life was like. 

I have no answers to your questions, but I do feel like climbing is a slow enough sport that you could adapt and make it work even with no depth perception, especially since you will almost always have a partner to help you determine things like pitch lengths, etc. 

I have very limited depth perception without my glasses, but things are still decently “sharp” at climbing hold distances, so on occasion I climb without them. I can safely say you’re not missing much. However, I have found seeing the precise distance to the next hold is difficult for me without my glasses, which can be jarring if you’re dynoing for a good hold and it’s not actually where you think it is. That’s really the only issue I’ve noticed. Oh actually- kind of the same thing, but if you’re looking down for footholds it can be hard to pinpoint the proper location. Regarding pitch length/looking down from the top- all you might be missing is a really disconcerting dropping feeling in your stomach when you’re up really high, or being able to eyeball a route from the ground - “hmm this one looks long, maybe I should break out the 70m.” My guess, and this could be utterly incorrect, is that you’re a more cautious, more thorough climber as a result, and maybe wear through toes in climbing shoes faster than your partners. Also this entire thing could be 800% wrong seeing as I’m trying to extrapolate data from a slightly different database.

Cheers and happy climbing!

Thanks my dudes. I’ve heard that someone used to seeing without depth perception can calculate distances as just well as someone who has it so I’m sure your homie is an excellent surfer. I’m pretty good parallel parking. The brain is just really good at adapting itself.

But in some difficulties I can relate. I am pretty decent with static holds- but doing dynamic moves doesn’t come naturally for me. Makes sense because my hand-eye coordination with ball sports is awful. 

With the footholds thing: my main issue is seeing features on slab. Some people seem to easily find those little dishes that make up slab footholds- for me I need to physically feel them out. Was wondering if those with depth perception had a better time seeing them.

I also have no depth perception, but I've known that's the case for my whole life. I was born cross-eyed, so even though it was fixed cosmetically when I was a toddler, my brain also never made the connection between my eyes, so I see out of only one at a time. I've also always wondered what actual depth perception would look like and how it would change climbing. For me, the biggest challenges I have with climbing are on approaches, especially downhill, and I'm grateful to all my friends who have been patient with me and help me when I struggle with this.

The book Fixing My Gaze might interest you – it's by a neuroscientist who didn't have depth perception but went through vision therapy when she was 50 and learned to see in stereo vision. I read this book before I started climbing and she's not a climber, but it was still fascinating for me to read her descriptions of when she started to experience seeing with actual depth for the first time.