If you are ever starving in Patagonia, Argentina, and get caught trying to rustle a sheep, it's best to drop your shorts and grab hold of the nearest animal. This was just one of the many humorous and strangely useful things a standing room only crowd of over 100 people learned when Adrian Burgess spoke at Penn last night. The famed mountain climber started his talk with this anecdote -- describing the desperate measures he was forced to take to find food and avoid tangling with Argentine cowboys while he was attempting to summit a mountain in Patagonia. In fact, much of the evening illustrated the wild man image he and his brother have developed over the past 30 plus years as they globetrotted and made a name for themselves in the world of mountaineering. The talk, titled "In Search of Everest," traced Burgess' climbing experience through the decades, covering everything from the Alps to the Himalayas. He supplemented his words with his own collection of photography taken during climbs. For over 90 minutes, Burgess held the audience's complete attention with his mix of stories, truisms and technical climbing details -- starting at the age of 14, with his first experiences climbing in England's Yorkshire Moors. Describing the advantages of climbing with an identical twin, Burgess explained that he is so close to his brother that they can climb without speaking and still know exactly what the other is doing. Burgess was also happy to share the one difference they have -- "I got the brain," he said, "and I won't tell you what he got, but he's always thinking with it." And when it came to the details of his Everest attempt, Burgess did not disappoint. Dozens of photos illustrated the route the climbers took in a "speed climb" style of ascent that Burgess helped pioneer. He made the climb to the summit -- 29,000 feet above sea level -- in only 17.5 hours. In another amusing tangent, Burgess explained how he set up a brewery at the Everest base camp and used it to barter with other people on the expedition. "For two or three hundred feet of rope," he explained, "you could get about five gallons of beer." When asked during the question-and-answer session if he felt he had beat the odds, Burgess turned again to light humor. "One in 10 on a Himalayan climb die," he said. "I've done 25 Himalayan climbs, so I should be dead 2.5 times." But humor aside, the audience filed out as an inspired bunch. "I really liked the way he talked about the social aspect of it," Drexel graduate student Vic Izzo said. "The sacrifices he had to make. It made it more interesting than if he had just told us all the things he had accomplished." The talk was supported by a host of University organizations but was organized by the University of Pennsylvania Outing Club.
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