Sheryl Falk at a memorial to perished Everest climbers
It’s not very often that Sheryl Falk gets to slow down, turn off her phone and think in-depth about her life. As co-leader of Winston & Strawn’s global privacy and data security task force, the Houston partner is always on the go – traveling almost every week, speaking at various conferences and ending her nights staying abreast of all her work emails.
But Falk recently had an off-the-grid opportunity when she traded two-and-a-half weeks of billable hours for her No. 1 bucket list item: making the climb to Everest Base Camp.
Falk returned from the trek not only fulfilling a lifelong dream but also with a new career goal: help advance more younger women attorneys.
Falk is now part of the faculty of the University of Texas’s 2019 Women in Law Institute, a full-day training program next month for female law students and judicial clerks that teaches them how to navigate successful legal careers. She will train those in attendance how to demonstrate their value when building their careers.
She also serves as the Houston office coordinator for Winston’s firmwide mentoring program targeted at helping young associates. She also informally mentors several associates at the firm.
She was inspired to open this new chapter in her career while trekking in the shadow of Mount Pumori, which lies eight kilometers west of Mount Everest. Named after the daughter of George Mallory, the famed British mountaineer who was a leading member of the first few expeditions of Mount Everest, Pumori means “Mountain Daughter” in the Sherpa language.
“The mountains are so tall and glorious that you’re literally trekking in the shadow of giants,” Falk told The Texas Lawbook. “As I was trekking I was just in gratitude – I’m living the life of my dreams, I’ve accomplished everything I’ve wanted. I’m a partner at a major global firm, I get to do big and exciting cases. As I was hiking in the shadow of the daughter mountains I realized I want to do more to help women lawyers.”
She realized her climb to Everest Base Camp served as a metaphor for her professional career.
“So much of your career you spend looking up and trying to get promoted,” she said.
But once at the top: “Instead of climbing up, it’s reaching down and seeing who else you can help up,” she said. “I’m on top of the mountain, and I want to reach down and help as many other people as I can to help them make it to the top, too.”
From Houston to the Himalayas
Falk, 51, had always dreamed of doing Everest, but did not think seriously about pursuing it until a partner in Winston’s Chicago office, Kimball Anderson, trekked to Everest Base Camp for the second time at age 62.
“He made me believe I could do it,” she said.
She decided age 50 would be the age she would finally fulfill her dream and scheduled a trip for 2017. But a month before her trip, she had to undergo emergency surgery after the doctor found something suspicious on her ovary. She rescheduled the trip to the following summer.
She was bedridden for a month after surgery before her doctor cleared her to start training for her trek. She started small by doing laps around her gym with a trainer.
“As I was walking, I said each step is bringing me closer to Everest,” she said.
Though living in Houston put her “a bit at a disadvantage” altitude-wise, Falk said she began walking in the Houston heat once she had recovered more from her surgery.
“Training in the heat helps you assimilate to altitude,” she said.
She also would do long hikes with her pack and intervals of running and walking. It also helped that Winston’s office is located in the 47-floor CenterPoint Energy Plaza skyscraper in downtown Houston.
“The very best thing is to get in the stairwell and go [all the way] up, back down, then back up and back down,” she said.
Lastly, she befriended Marcus Capone, a business executive and former Navy SEAL Team 6 member, when the two spoke at an event together in Dallas. Aside from the sage advice he gave her to train with weight on her back, she said Capone also provided great moral support – particularly one time when the two were at a client dinner together.
“When they came around for dessert, [Capone] says, ‘No dessert for her’,” Falk said. “I really appreciated the encouragement.”
Everest wasn’t the first mountain Falk had trekked – of course, with the base camp being anchored 17,600 feet above sea level, that’s never advised anyway. With her husband, Rick Retz, who Falk describes as a “real deal mountain climber,” the couple has summited Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa (19,341’), where they slept in a volcanic crater at 18,000 feet after summiting. They’ve also climbed Mount Ranier in Washington (14,411 feet) and have hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu and 110 miles of the Tour de Mont Blanc in the Swiss and Italian Alps.
After the Kilimanjaro summit: “The first email I sent was ‘Made it to the top. It was miserable. Never doing that again,’” she recalled.
She found herself thinking something similar after finishing the Everest climb.
“I thought, ‘OK, that’s it. I don’t have to do that again,’” she recalled. But after forgetting the “bruises and sore muscles,” she said she thinks Mount Fuji sounds like an attractive new conquest.
The Trek
Falk said the trek to Everest Base Camp took about 10 days. Each day the group would hike to a new village. She brought her husband, Rick with her as well as her younger brother, Benjamin Falk, a law student at Texas Tech University. She was the only woman in the six-person group.
Day one of the journey began with intimidation: their Sherpa guides informed them that a forty-something man from Hong Kong had just died doing the same trek.
“It was sobering because that was what we were doing,” Falk said. “It really puts all the prayer flags and prayer wheels in context. Along the way, there’s a memorial to all of the people who have died on the trek. It’s very somber; you are aware that it is a dangerous place.”
Aside from the fear, the expedition was of course more physically grueling than Falk had ever anticipated. Halfway through she began taking Diamox to help her adjust to the altitude.
“Everything hurts and you have to keep going,” she said. “You push yourself to the limits, and then you keep going.”
But the views – and opportunity to disconnect from daily life – more than made up for it.
“We walked through this one forest that was full of Rhododendron trees of white blossoms and red blossoms,” she said. “On the way up, you have a lot of time to think about your life – not about cases, but ‘Where do I put my foot?’ ”
Around the halfway point, one of Falk’s fellow trekkers, a “lawyer from Miami who ran every day,” got such severe altitude sickness that he arranged for a helicopter to help him complete the Base Camp journey.
Falk admits she thought about following suit, but “not for more than a minute. I wanted to earn it.”
Luckily she didn’t give in, and the next day ended up validating her decision with beautiful, warmer weather.
A highlight of the trip included a blessing at the Tengboche Monastery from the Incarnate Llama Rimboche, the reincarnate of a “very powerful monk.” Another unexpected highlight came when Falk’s group got to a primitive inn that had a real Western bathroom.
“I was so happy I cried,” Falk said.
The day Falk ascended to Base Camp, her group got up at 5 a.m. to prepare. They huffed and puffed for eight hours down the mountain trail, across boulder fields and along a narrow ridge. It began to snow as the “brightly colored tents of base camp” came into view.
“It made all the hardness, challenge and effort – and being tired and dirty – worth it,” Falk said. “It was just a magical moment.”
Falk’s husband surprised her at the top with sugar tea cakes from the same British baker that George Mallory brought with him on his Everest trek.
She almost didn’t live to tell the tale of meeting her lifelong dream.
At a particularly populated ridge during the hike out of Base Camp, Falk was passing through close to the edge when the Earth beneath her collapsed. She started slipping down a cliff but instantly three pairs of hands belonging to her husband, a Sherpa and a stranger pulled her up at the same time.
She said she recalled feeling “shock” but the moment wasn’t as poignant as it should have been in her memory because her brain was only receiving 50 percent of its usual oxygen level due to the high altitude.
“I would have been more scared if I had more oxygen to the brain,” she said. “It was like being drunk and you can barely comprehend it.”
At Everest Base Camp, Falk waved a Winston & Strawn sign that Anderson, the colleague who inspired her to embark on the journey, sent with her.