Dick Bass - 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.

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First eBook Edition: November 1988

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Designed by Giorgetta Bell McRee

Cover design by Anthony Russo

Cover photo by Bruce Coleman, Inc.

ISBN: 978-0-446-55052-9

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 summitthemselvesas 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 sayhe got it rightjust the way it wasjust 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 thereahead of us with all of his camera equipment on every climb in 83all 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 alltogether 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 discountedMcKinley, 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 naivetethey 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. Ive been in it fourteen years, and Ive 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.