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Britton Keeshan
Youngest to Climb the Seven
Summits |
Britton Keeshan was
backpacking on a clear day in Alaska’s Talkeetna
Mountains when he first laid eyes on Denali rising
above the clouds. He was 15 years old, and his first
thought at the sight of the tallest mountain in North
America was, “I want to climb that.” Little
did Keeshan know at that first glimpse that he would
soon become the youngest person to climb each continent’s
highest summit before he even turned 23.
Only 90 people
have accomplished this feat since 1985, when American
Dick Bass first conceived and completed the Seven
Summits challenge. Keeshan started climbing the Seven
Summits at age 17, completing all seven peaks in just
four years and 326 days, all while attending Middlebury
College with a double major. “I set a goal for
myself and was determined to accomplish it,” says
Keeshan.
As the grandson of the late Bob Keeshan, better
known as the children’s television star Captain
Kangaroo, the climber has been encouraged to strive
toward his goals since an early age. “My grandfather
devoted his life to children’s literacy, and
he believed that kids should expand their horizons,” says
Keeshan. “I credit him for inspiring me to go
out and do amazing things. Climbing the seven summits
was part of his whole ideology of setting goals and
achieving them.” When Keeshan reached the summit
of Everest on May 24, 2004, he buried a picture of
himself and his grandfather in the ice.
Keeshan grew
up in a suburb of Greenwich, Connecticut, an unlikely
starting point for a successful mountaineer. “I
wanted to break the mold and do something original,” Keeshan
says of his desire to pursue a sport far from home.
It was this attitude that brought him outdoors, first
through a program where at 14 he learned rock climbing
and whitewater kayaking skills. The next summer he
went to the Talkeetna Range, where he first encountered
NOLS. “I was hiking along and we came across
a NOLS course,” says Keeshan. “It just
seemed so intense, I knew at that point, NOLS was the
next step up and something I should definitely do.”
The
very next summer Keeshan enrolled on the Waddington
Range Mountaineering course, where he says he experienced
the most physically challenging day of his life. “It
was the first day of my course and we had to hike up
3,000 feet just to get going on the glacier,” Keeshan
remembers. “I was only 16 and felt so small.
I got to the top and was convinced I wasn’t going
to make it to the end.” But the young climber
successfully completed his course and enjoyed his experience
so much that he enrolled the following summer in the
NOLS Denali Expedition course, where he could fulfill
his goal of climbing North America’s largest
peak.
The lessons he learned at NOLS not only gave
him the technical skills, but also the interpersonal
skills imperative for the teamwork associated with
mountaineering. “My NOLS experiences were unlike
any others I’ve ever had,” he says. “The
courses gave me all the skills I needed to climb mountains,
work as a team, and inspired me to summit the seven
peaks. My time at NOLS has shaped me into the person
I am today. The lessons I learned at NOLS have come
with me everywhere I go.”
Keeshan has brought
his NOLS lessons to the far corners of the world.
When he’s not mountaineering, the climber is working
at his other passion, third-world medicine, which he
has skillfully managed to incorporate into his mountaineering
adventures. While preparing for the altitude challenges
of Everest, he spent time in Ethiopia, volunteering
at a Mother Theresa AIDS Clinic, helping in the physical
therapy of bedridden AIDS patients in the morning and
training for his summit in the afternoons. He has also
volunteered in a Leprosy clinic in the Himalayas, to
immerse himself in Indian culture. “My main goal
is to make a positive difference in people’s
lives,” Keeshan says.
Whether in a medical clinic
in the Himalayas, studying at Middlebury in preparation
for medical school, or on a mountain, Keeshan consistently
challenges himself, striving to accomplish his personal
goals. “It feels great to have climbed the Seven
Summits, not because I set a record, but because I
completed something I set out to do,” the climber
says. “The record was just sort of icing on the
cake.”
-Susanna Helm
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