Seven Summits
The excerpts on pages 3 and 208 from “A Rolling Stone” and the excerpt on page 90 from “The Men Who Don't Fit In” are reprinted by permission of Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc. from
The Collected Poems of Robert Service
by Robert Service
Copyright © 1986 by Frank Wells and Dick Bass
All right reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Grand Central Publishing
Hachette Book Group
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New York, NY 10017
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http://www.HachetteBookGroup.com
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First eBook Edition: November 1988
Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Designed by Giorgetta Bell McRee
Cover design by Anthony Russo
Cover photo by Bruce Coleman, Inc.
ISBN: 978-0-446-55052-9
Contents
3: ACONCAGUA: THE FIRST EXPEDITION
11: KILIMANJARO AND ELBRUS: THREE TO GO
14: KOSCIUSKO: A WALK IN THE PARK
16: THIRD TIME WORKS THE CHARM
SEVEN SUMMITS
CONQUERS THE HEIGHTS
“A grand job… it's going to cause a revolution in the boardrooms of the U.S. as countless executives relate to Frank and Dick and take off on far-flung adventures. It certainly brought me some wonderful memories of Vinson …really captured the feeling of that adventure.”
—
Chris Bonington
“A riveting example of both the incredible strength of the human mind and the awesome, unrelenting demands of nature at its most powerful.”
—
San Jose Mercury News
“You don't have to be a mountaineer to appreciate this rare glimpse from the top of the world.”
—
Peter Ueberroth
“A book for people with dreams, no matter what those dreams are…. If this book does for you what it did for me, it will leave you with the feeling that you can do anything you want to do.”
—
Arizona Daily Star
“Dick Bass and Frank Wells shared a great adventure. Like Caesar, they came, they saw, they conquered. But actually, they conquered themselves, not the mountains.”
—
H. Ross Perot
“A story of exotic climes, camaraderie, and challenge: of ice storms and literal cliff-hanging danger: of two men who wanted to stand on top of the world … and see it all from its seven summits.”
—
Clint Eastwood
“A good armchair adventure story…
Seven Summits
has elements of loyalty, death, love, action, travel and suspense. Bass and Wells are just two men who had ridden their dream to an end. Readers should enjoy the ride.”
—
Dallas Morning News
“This fascinating story is an unbelievable dream come true… exciting reading of two men overcoming seven different continental summits.”
—
Gerald R. Ford
“[An] incredible story…. You don't have to know or care about mountaineering to enjoy it. If you like a gripping, inspiring adventure story, you'll love
Seven Summits.
I recommend it highly.”
—
Rocky Mountain News
“A gripping tale of adventure that embraces courage, disappointment, joy and commitment.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“Does a very good job of describing how they suffered and failed, suffered and succeeded. On peak after peak…[it] tells the reader more about mountaineering than most any magazine, newspaper or book has previously told.”
—
Salt Lake Tribune
“The book is an inspirational message and gives hope to us all that we needn't abandon our own ‘impossible dreams.’”
—
Pittsburgh Press
“An exciting story, as much for their conquering the
eighth
summit—themselves—as for the other seven.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Our love and appreciation to our families,
to David Breashears,
and, especially, to Marty Hoey
Rick Ridgeway, to whom alone credit is due for the massive undertaking encompassed in these covers, has done so thorough a job of capturing our motives and feelings about the Seven Summits that even to try to elaborate would be without purpose. Instead, we simply say—he got it right—just the way it was—just the way we felt— and why we did it. We thank him deeply, for he alone ultimately wrote this book.
The dedicatory page speaks for itself. To that page we add just these few further expressions of deepest gratitude.
To Nansey Neiman of Warner Books, who with unfailing energy saw through to completion the editing and publishing of this book. To Steve Marts who was always there—ahead of us with all of his camera equipment on every climb in ‘83—all the way to the top; tireless; climber as well as photographer (and without whom FGW would never have made it to the top of Elbrus). He is so totally unique that it would take half another book to convey his qualities and contributions to this odyssey.
And, of course, to Giles. This book
does
do him justice and he deserves it all—together with our undying appreciation. We thank him and all the climbers, especially the indomitable Phil Ershler, as well as the many others whom you will meet in these pages.
FGW
RDB
Snowbird, Utah
January, 1986
T
heir goal was to climb the highest mountain on each of the seven continents. It was an imposing list: Aconcagua in South America, Everest in Asia, McKinley in North America, Kilimanjaro in Africa, Elbrus in Europe, Vinson in Antarctica, Kosciusko in Australia.
Everest would be the most difficult because of the extreme altitude, over 29,000 feet. Vinson would be the greatest logistical challenge because of its location deep in the interior of frozen Antarctica. But the other peaks were not to be discounted—McKinley, for example, at over 20,000 feet and close to the Arctic Circle, has some of the most severe weather on earth.
No one had ever scaled all seven summits. To do so would be an accomplishment coveted by the world's best mountaineers.
Thus it was even more improbable that Frank Wells and Dick Bass proposed to try it, both of them having so little climbing experience they could hardly be ranked amateur much less world-class. And if that wasn't enough, Frank was a few months from his fiftieth birthday, and Dick had already reached fifty-one.
What made them think they had a chance? Part of it was naivete—they knew so little about high altitude mountaineering they didn't realize just how preposterous their proposal was. But part also was their strong conviction that with enough hard work and perseverance they could accomplish anything they set their minds to. It was a conviction that for both of them had led to successful business careers; Frank was the president of Warner Brothers Studios, Dick an entrepreneur with an oil business in Texas, a ski resort in Utah, and coal interests in Alaska. They figured that if it worked in business, why not in mountain climbing.
So with the attitude that anything is possible, the two set out to accomplish the impossible.
But why? Why risk their lives on the frozen, barren slopes of the world's most remote mountains? Especially when both could justifiably take pride and pleasure in their success in the business world?
When they first started their adventure, Frank and Dick weren't that sure themselves. By the time they had finished their Seven Summit odyssey, however, they had no doubt. They were so charged from their experiences they were eager to share them with anyone willing to listen.
Dick told his friends how in his business it often took years before he could enjoy the successful completion of a project. “Look at my Snowbird Ski Resort. I’ve been in it fourteen years, and I’ve got at least that many more before I see it reach its manifest destiny. And when you're involved in long-term projects, sometimes you feel you're on a treadmill in a dark tunnel and you don't know when you're ever going to break out into the sunlight.
“With mountain climbing, I’ve discovered a tangible, short-term goal. It's me and the mountain, and that's it. There are no bankers or regulatory officials telling me what I can and can't do. It's just me and my own two feet, my own physical strength and my own mental resolve.
“At the same time it's only rewarding if the mountain is a real one. Podunk hills don't count. I’m trying to make up for the frustration I face in the lowlands, and to do that I’ve got to have a challenge, something to gut up for, something that forces me to strain. There has to be a spirit of adventure to it, too, and an element of uncertainty and risk. Then when I persevere and prevail, when I overcome and make it, I come back down to the lowlands, back to the bankers and the regulatory officials, and by golly I’m recharged and ready to take them all on.”
Frank, too, told friends and acquaintances about the unexpected lessons, the surprises.
“It all started as a challenge,” he said. “And probably a good bit of macho as well. But it became much, much more. It became travel, adventure, true camaraderie. It was all about going high, as high as you can get. When I spent three nights on the South Col of Everest, at 26,200 feet, I was probably the highest human on the face of the earth those particular days. But it was also the sheer fun, and it was especially the magic moments, the surprises that came over the next rise.
“It was the first time I saw Everest after dreaming about it for thirty years, when in a truck out of Lhasa we came over a pass and there it was, higher than anything around, with that great and ever-present cloud plume streaking off the summit.
“It was beating our way in a storm up to 16,000 feet on McKinley and getting to the top of the ridge to suddenly break into the clear and see what looked like all of Alaska spreading below us.
“It was being ushered into the presence of the High Lama of Tengboche Monastery in Nepal, and having our expedition blessed, and receiving a blessing for ourselves.
“And of course it was the summits. It was standing on top of Aconcagua, the first time I had finally made the summit of any of our peaks, hugging Bass. It was marching in lockstep with Bass to the summit of Elbrus—having not made it the year before—reciting in unison one of Dick's favorite poems, Kipling's ‘Gunga Din.’
“And perhaps most of all, it was on Kilimanjaro, where my dream to someday climb the Seven Summits had started nearly thirty years before. It was a night at our last high camp huddled around the fire with twenty near-naked African porters when Bass decided to recite another one of his favorite poems.
“’Have you heard “The Rolling Stone” by Robert Service?’
“’No,’ we told him, ‘somehow that one's gotten by.’
“So he recited it:
“’To scorn all strife, and to view all life
With the curious eyes of a child;
From the plangent sea to the prairie,
From the slum to the heart of the Wild.
From the red-rimmed star to the speck of sand,
From the vast to the greatly small;
For I know that the whole for the good is planned,
And I want to see it all.’
“And I guess that's the answer. We wanted to see it all, and we knew no better way than from the tops of the tallest mountains on each of the seven continents.”
THE DREAM
I
t was a sunny July morning in 1981, and Dick Bass had no inkling whatever that before the day was over he would receive a phone call that would send him on the beginning of an incredible series of adventures to the most remote corners of every continent on earth.
He arrived in his downtown Dallas office expecting the same frustrations he had suffered all month. Herbert Hunt, one of his two partners in an Alaska coal lease, had been so busy with other far-flung business involvements he hadn't had time to close the sale of the lease to a mining company; Dick needed no one to remind him that if the contract wasn't signed by September 1 he would have no way of coming up with the $4 million needed to meet the loan payment on his Snowbird Ski Resort in Utah. The thought of losing his life's overriding purpose and passion left him with a numbing sense of desperation. He loved Snowbird. There was nothing that made him happier than seeing people swooshing down the finest powder skiing in the world. And nothing equalled the satisfaction of knowing he had created the place from scratch.