25 | A High Altitude Climbing Legend Part 1 w/ Alan Burgess

The Climbing Majority

All right, people, today is a special day because we are sitting down with one of the most legendary high alpine climbers of the 20th century. His name is Alan Burgess. Alan first reached out to me after seeing a climbing majority poster at our local climbing gym here in Reno. We met at a coffee shop and I did not know what to expect, having not known who he was or about his stories up to this point. He handed a book to me. It was called The Burgess Book of Lies, and his vision was to turn it into an audiobook. To be honest, at this point, I had no idea who Alan was. And now, after hearing his stories, I'm a bit ashamed as a climber not to have known who he was. But after sitting down with him for probably an hour, I knew that he was special and his life needed to be shared. So I agreed. Unfortunately, after much effort, the project of turning his book into an audiobook just did not make any sense. And we had to call it quits. So instead, we are sitting here today to do the second best thing to get him on to the podcast, to hear his story. Alan lived a life that most of us couldn't even dream of. His vast experience in the mountains and the multitude of a sense worldwide that he is accomplished in his life would just be impossible to capture in a podcast episode. So we decided to break up his story into two parts. In this episode, we are going to talk about his childhood and what climbing was like in the 1950s. And then we're going to talk about his most notable super Alpine ascents. The first climb we're going to be talking about is his third ascent of the American route on Fitzroy in Patagonia. Next is the first alpine-style ascent of the French route on the north face of Huascaran Norte in Peru. And third, we're going to be talking about the first ascent of the southwest buttress of Mount Logan in Canada, a route that has never been repeated. And finally, we're going to close this episode out by talking about how he was able to fund and create a life of climbing around the world and how he was able to survive through countless situations where most fail.
Please rate, review the show, and share this podcast with your friends. Word of mouth is one of the most powerful tools to help us out.
Contact us:
IG: @the.climbing.majority
Email: [e-mail]
Resources:
Buy Alan's Book HERE

Chapters

1. Introduction (00:00:00)

2. The Early Years (00:03:26)

3. Fitzroy (00:38:01)

4. Huascaran Norte (00:59:58)

5. Mt. Logan (01:29:42)

6. Deep Topics (01:56:06)