Walnut Creek city council member Kevin Wilk climbs to Mt. Everest base camp

(BCN) — Kevin Wilk’s daughter was on an airplane to Los Angeles just after Thanksgiving when the pilot told passengers they’d reached 10,000 feet. She looked out the window at how far down the ground was. Then a realization hit her.

“She looked out the window and said ‘My dad was still 7,000 feet higher,'” the Walnut Creek city councilmember said over coffee at Walnut Creek’s Buttercup diner. “That’s when it really hit her, how high it was. It just put it in perspective.”

Wilk just spent more than three weeks halfway around the world in Nepal, climbing Mount Everest. The summit is off limits in the fall — unpredictable weather makes it too dangerous. But the base camp, where people summiting the world’s highest mountain at 29,028 feet camp and gather themselves for the final push to the top, was a tough enough destination.

Base camp is 17,598 feet above sea level. The highest mountain in the continental U.S. is California’s Mount Whitney, at 14,505 feet.

So, essentially, Wilk climbed the equivalent of the lower 48’s highest mountain, then another Mount Diablo (3,849 feet) to reach base camp, give or take a few hundred feet.

Wilk’s biggest previous climb was Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro. He has an adventurous friend who climbs all the world’s biggest peaks, including Everest, where he acts as a guide.

“He’s been doing this every November for 10 years and he’s been asking to go with him every year,” Wilk said. “And whether it’s an election year, or working, or whatever, I couldn’t take the time off.”

“But I’m not getting any younger. And so he said last year, ‘What do you think about doing next year?’ I said ‘You know what? This is the year. It’s kind of like when your friend says ‘Hey, let’s jump off the ship.'”

Wilk trained for a year and a half, doing high-intensity interval work at the gym and climbing whatever tall peaks he could get to in the Sierra Nevada. The work was necessary. Wilk lost 10 pounds during the 15-day excursion up the mountain.

“Once we got to the second day, we started at about 9,000. Feet,” Wilk said. “And once we started the second day, we already were feeling it at that point. So we’re now at about 11,000 feet and there’s a lightheadedness. I likened it to, you know, when at a kids’ party, you blow the balloon really fast and get a little dizzy. Even taking any steps up in altitude could really be a challenge.”

Not including Sherpas and porters helping with gear, Wilk went with a group of 15, including his friend, who was one of the guides, and former San Ramon city councilmember Sabina Zafar.

“There was somebody was there from Canada, somebody from Australia, somebody from Florida and Tennessee. And Sabina Zafar, who now lives in New York,” Wilk said. “When I mentioned this to her about a year and a half ago, what I was going to be doing, she said ‘Oh my God, that’s on my bucket list. I’d love to go.’ It was actually great to have somebody that is a friend, that we could commiserate and be miserable together.”

One person needed a helicopter to take them off the mountain from altitude sickness. Wilk said the lighter air affected his eating and sleeping, of which he got about four hours a night.

There were lodges along the way where the group stayed overnight. “The group was so large, we had to order our meals while we were finishing the previous meal. So here I am, not hungry. I’m barely trying to get my meal down and have it stay down. And then what do you want for dinner, Kevin? Whatever. Bring food. Noodles, Eggs, maybe some toast? Whatever it was, it was bland,” Wilk said. “It was going to be digestible, usually. Stay down. Allow me to continue for the next day.”

In one of the small settlements along the way, Wilk went to what he said is called “the highest nightclub in the world.”

“There’s a nightclub on the Himalayas in Namche Bazaar, which is really the big trading post in the Himalayas. There’s several nightclubs and this one had live music,” Wilk said “That was at about 11,800 feet. There’s bands playing. My entertainment was getting in the sleeping bag and going to go to sleep early, But yeah, we could enjoy it more.”

Wilk said the people of Nepal were very friendly and thankful for the business after travel ground to a halt during the pandemic.

“Everybody we came across certainly was friendly, happy to have us there,” Wilk said. “They didn’t have tourism during the COVID years. They talked about how challenging it was, that there was just no money for the economy there.”

Though the trek was strenuous and somewhat dangerous, it wasn’t all wilderness. Wilk was able to regularly update friends and family on social media.

“They would have all sorts of insight of where we could get a cup of coffee or, if we wanted to, even get a massage. I mean, you can really get anything up there. You’re paying; It gets more expensive the higher you go. Everybody was absolutely friendly to us. You can charge your phones, charge your IPad. Whatever it is, they’ll charge for that. Then you can pay for Wi-Fi. Maybe pictures would get through, maybe they wouldn’t.”

Wilk said the climb was too spectacular not to share. The group saw the peak of Everest the third day.

“Oh my God, the mountains are majestic and incredible. But I wanted people that are my friends and people that know who I am to show these are some of the challenges. This was really hard. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done and I and I climbed Kilimanjaro. This is the most challenging I’ve put my body through.”

He said every step was a challenge, as the trail is rocky and the tradeoff for those incredible views is knowing one wrong step and you’re plunging off a cliff.

“If you’re not in good physical condition then you have less of a chance,” said Wilk, who when asked his age, said “over 50.”

“My biggest concern, aside from eating properly, was if I got injured or sick. Then I knew I was going to be in real trouble. Every step I had to focus on, for eight hours a day,” he said. “The most nerve-wracking part was on some of these trails that were very narrow, maybe 18 inches wide, and you’re on a very steep hillside, and there’s boulders at the top and you’re supposed to watch out for those.”

Getting to base camp was a relief. But there was another realization as well.

“One thing that really resonated with me was, there we are at base camp, 17,000 feet. We look up and you see the peak of Everest at 29,000 feet,” Wilk said. “I’m going, ‘And that’s another 12,000 feet?'”

If possible, would he have kept going?

“I knew I wasn’t feeling good as it was,” Wilk said. “None of us were feeling great. Some of the expeditions go another four to six weeks starting at base camp and a climatization to then make the push for the summit. if you were doing this in springtime.”

Climatization is getting used to the thin air by climbing a particular steep part and climbing back down to the regular trail. Wilk said his group did one along the way of about 1,000 feet.

“You need to plan for that ahead of time, right? You just don’t get to base camp and say ‘Well, I think I’ll keep going. You’ve got to give yourself a two-to-three month window.”

“Let me put it this way: I’m glad I did it and I’m glad I’m not doing it again,” he said.

Wilk said the trip changed his perspective, which was worth missing one City Council meeting, something he said he has “rarely, rarely” done.

“I would like to go to Machu Picchu (in Peru); That’s something that that is on the bucket list,” Wilk said. “It’s not like I’m looking to scale the world’s big mountains and do adventures that are dangerous. I’m not looking for danger. I’m not looking to defy death. I want to experience everything that life has to hold.

“I think it’s important that we get out of our paradigm, that we challenge ourselves in different ways that we experience when we can. While we’re on planet Earth, we go around once in life and this is it,” he said.

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