By Tim Friend
USA TODAY
Mountain climber and extreme fitness instructor Sean Burch is back from Mount Everest, where he reached the summit, perhaps at the cost of fingertips and toes.
Burch, 33, of Oakton, Va., was featured last month in a USA TODAY article on the 50th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay’s historic climb. His plan was to climb without oxygen. But in a May 22 satellite telephone interview with Burch from the South Col inside the so-called “death zone,” he sounded disoriented. “Will … have … to … get … oxygen.” Then click, he was gone.
Burch’s premature exhaustion began with skipping rope at 26,000 feet. Maybe not a good idea: “I returned from outside my tent on the South Col, where I had been jumproping to break my old world record, and now lay comatose.”
Burch tried twice to reach the summit. High winds stopped him the first time. He began the second attempt at 9 p.m. May 21. “I started up the mountain to a slow steady rhythm – four steps, stop, breathe. … Finally, the dream stopped being a dream. I could go no higher because I was there, on top of the world. However, I felt no happiness, no desire to raise my arms in victory. I had used every ounce of strength and every emotion. I dropped to my knees.”
After five minutes, he headed down without oxygen. Oxygen-starved climbers should not stop moving. At the Hillary Step, climbers were backed up. Burch waited 30 minutes to descend on the ropes. He had frostbite on a previous climb: Once you’ve had it, you’re more likely to get it again.
“It was after I had moved down the Step that I realized I could not feel my toes. But now I was too tired to care or worry for my safety. But my brain would start clicking again, telling me to get up and move down to air, down to life.”
Burch returned to base camp May 24 with his fingers and toes turned various shades of white and black. Now he is home hobbling on the balls of his feet. But circulation is returning to the digits. He hopes to lose only a fingertip and a piece of a big toe.
Was it worth the cost? “Damn straight,” he says. “I would do it again for a finger or a toe. But not for a foot or hand.”
On Top of the World
By Gretchen Reynolds
Eight years ago, Sean Burch was looking for a goal, any goal. He had just worked for five years to earn his black belt in martial arts and was casting about for his next achievement. Then he picked up the book Into Thin Air and found one: Mount Everest. While others might have seen the book’s tales of death and disaster as a warning against choosing the giant Himalayan peak as a target, Burch found only inspiration.
“I loved the idea of people who choose a goal and then go through trails and tribulations and dangers to achieve it,” says Burch. An accomplished athlete and fitness trainer, Burch had never done any technical climbing but didn’t let his lack of experience faze him. Everest seemed the ideal goal. For Burch, then and now, waking up is only worthwhile if there is something to be accomplished that day. “I realized that what I needed was the objective, not the expertise,” he explains. “If I stuck to my goal, and aimed for it, and refused to give up, I knew I would achieve it.”
He was not mistaken. In May 2003, the 50th anniversary year of the first ascent of Mount Everest by Sir Edmund Hillary, Sean Burch reached the summit of the world’s highest peak. His journey proved to be both physically and emotionally grueling. But it was also rewarding. It wound up teaching him lessons about willpower, courage, patience and stubborn resilience – the essence of goals themselves.
It familiarized him, too, with some of the sport’s more esoteric points: “I learned,” says Burch with a rueful laugh, “that if you get frostbite, you’ve got to make sure no one steps on your toes. Otherwise they’ll squash like grapes.”
Learning the Ropes
Burch’s trip to the top of Everest began in earnest four years ago, when he first began his training as a mountaineer. “I know people are often afraid to take on new challenges because they don’t know how to start,” he says. “Well, I’m proof positive that you can learn. I didn’t know anything about mountain climbing.”
Being confident but not foothardy, Burch knew he couldn’t head directly to the Himalayas. He took classes at mountaineering schools and started climbing low, easy peaks in the United States. “When you’re aiming for a big goal, you need to have manageable, intermediate steps,” he notes. “Succeeding at those create positive enemy, and that energy is like an avalanche. It builds on itself and pushes you along to greater things.”
Burch learned fast and became so adept at climbing that in 2002 he was asked to join an expedition making several first ascents in Greenland (for more on that trip, see “Thrill Factor, Chill Factor” in the Nov./Dec. 2002 Experience Life). In Burch’s mind, however, even these advanced treks were merely preparatory. “I had my heart set on Everest, and I knew I wouldn’t be content with anything less than reaching my ultimate goal,” he says. Finally, in April 2003, Burch reached the base of the big mountain.
Setting Sights
For many climbers, their first glimpse of Mount Everest is breathtaking. Literally, Everest Base Camp, where all ascents begin, sits 17,600 feet above sea level. At this height, the oxygen supply is so limited that most people find the smallest exertion painful. Many spend their days sitting quietly in their tents. Not Sean Burch: Every three or four days, he would jump rope.
“The jumping was something I’d decided to do for my fitness-class students,” he says. “They’d cheered me on and supported me while I trained. I wanted to send them a message.” The sessions weren’t easy. “I wasn’t quite prepared for how hard it was to breathe,” says Burch.
Then began the real work of getting used to the altitude. Acclimatization requires a weeklong period of struggling partway up the slope, staying at an established camp for a few hours or a day, then returning to Base Camp. Only in this way can a climber adapt to the altitude and hope to survive. But it is not the ideal way to build momentum for a big assault on the summit. “The first few weeks on Everest, it felt like for every step forward I took 10 back,” Burch says, “But I kept reminding myself it was all part of the plan.”
Turning Back
Finally, the time came for Burch’s attempt at the summit. The decision about when to make that final push is never taken lightly. Climbers first must make their slow, laborious way up to Camp 4, at 26,000 feet above sea level, the highest of the established sites on Everest. This is well into the so-called Death Zone, an altitude at which the oxygen is so thin that climbers risk death if they stay for longer than 48 hours.
On the morning of his summit attempt, Burch rose at 4 a.m., setting out into deep, aching cold. The wind picked up. He struggled on for hours, but then, says Burch, “the conditions turned deadly. I had to turn back.”
That moment was one of the biggest disappointments he’d ever experienced. Still, Burch was philosophical. “You have to be willing to accept some changes to your overall plan,” he says, “as long as the changes never include quitting.” He rested at Camp 4 that night, desultorily jumping rope as well as he could, just to raise his spirits. His time in the Death Zone was drawing to a close: If he didn’t reach the summit the next morning, he’d have to head down without ever seeing the top.
Last Attempt
“When I set out on that last attempt, I was really determined,” Burch says, “There was nothing short of fatal conditions that was going to stop me.” Conditions instead proved fine – if you can call temperatures hovering around 80 degrees below zero is “fine.” But at least the winds had slowed. Burch slogged to the top, always reminding himself, “one more step.” The last 100 yards took him hours.
Then he was there, at the highest point on the globe. He looked around in awe. And saw nothing but storm clouds. “I was so exhausted and so happy to have accomplished what I set out to do that it didn’t matter,” he says of the view. Burch spent five minutes at the top, then began his descent. “I couldn’t linger,” he explains. “Getting back down from the summit is every bit as hard as going up.”
On May 24, 2003, Burch arrived back at Everest Base Camp, intact, if a bit bruised and battered. Because he’d developed frostbite in his fingers and feet, a news crew evacuated him to the Nepalese city of Kathmandu for medical care.
Burch was lucky. He kept his toes. Many less fortunate Everest climbers have wound up paying permanently – with the loss of nose, ears, limbs and life. Which leads less extreme types to wonder: Can any elective experience possibly be worth that risk? Burch doesn’t romanticize the feat.
“Anyone who thinks climbing Everest is going to be fun should stay far away from the mountain,” warns Burch. Instead, he says, it was his goal that mattered, especially the intensity that having that goal added to his daily life in the years leading up to his climb. Burch now finds himself driven to help other people change their lives, clarify their priorities and challenge themselves.
Back at home in Virginia, Burch is working as a trainer and giving motivational speeches. “Being on that mountain, facing life and death, you realize what matters,” he says. “It’s not money or fame. It’s challenging yourself – becoming the best and strongest person you can be.”
Burch is already well into the planning for his next adventure: He’ll ski, alone, to both the North and South Poles, pulling his supplies in a sledge. If he succeeds, he’ll become the first American to stand at all three poles, including the tip-top, Mount Everest. “Motivation and momentum go hand-in-hand,” he concludes, “Succeeding at one goal gives you the energy and enthusiasm to start thinking about the next.”