#294: Bill Burke

Kosciuszko · Carstensz · Completed 2009-05-23

United States · Male

Born 19 Mar 1942

Retired corporate lawyer

Bill Burke, a corporate lawyer from Costa Mesa, California, who studied at Stanford Law School and practised law for more than 45 years, took up high-altitude mountaineering around the time he retired at 60. He climbed Denali in May 2002, Aconcagua in December 2003 (a traverse, up the Vacas Valley and down the Horcones), Kilimanjaro by the Machame route in December 2004, Elbrus in August 2005, Vinson in January 2006, and Kosciuszko and Carstensz Pyramid in May 2006.

On 23 May 2009, aged 67, he reached the summit of Everest from Nepal by the South Col with Asian Trekking's Eco-Everest Expedition, which completed both lists of the 7 summits. By his own account he was then the oldest American to reach the summit and return. He went back to the Tibetan side in 2010, 2011 and 2012, turning round each time on the North-East Ridge, and reached the top from Tibet on 25 May 2014, aged 72. The ascent list shows his first Everest summit, from Nepal; the 2014 ascent from Tibet is recorded here. He describes himself as the only person to have climbed the highest mountain on every continent after turning 60.

In 2014 Nepal opened a 6,942 m peak between Everest and Cho Oyu and named it Burke Khang after him. A documentary, Eight Summits: The Bill Burke Story, won an award at the International Outdoor Film Festival in Prague in 2019. Since then he has paddled the length of the Mississippi (2019) and the Missouri (2023) solo by canoe and walked the Camino de Santiago.