Seven Summits

Book given to me by Dick Bass, following a a Yale alumni trip to China. It is a fascinating account of climbing the highest mountain on esch continent, varying greatly in difficulty.

The 7summits have become a modern queste to escape the fast world. But it's not just wealthy business men 'buying' themselves to the summit, all kinds of people from many countries are on the infamous list.Steve Bell has doen a thorough job of compiling the different viewpoints about 'what is the 7th summit', Carstensz Pyramid in Irian Jaya or Kosciuszko in Australia. The book is filled with useful general info about the mountains, route sketches but most of all inspiring stories from the climbers themselves, coupled with breathtaking and unique pictures.At the end is also a list with all the details of the first 60+ climbers and other statistics, but the problem is ofcourse that these are outdated right away (the current 23-april-02 list is 91 persons long and can be found online.Whether you are a climber yourself and aspire to summit these great peaks or you are an armchair mountaineer who likes to have something wonderful too look at on the coffetable, this book is not to be missed.

This review is based on the Mitchell Beazley, UK edition.Seven Summits is a fantastic book by Steve Bell (a superb British mountaineer) all about the highest mountains on each continent. For each mountain there's detailed explanation about the various climbing routes, the best climbing season, flora and fauna, weather, statistical information, etc. The mountains of focus, if you didn't know them already, are Everest, Asia, 8848m; Aconcagua, South America, 6960m; McKinley, North America, 6194; Kilimanjaro, Africa, 5895m; Elbrus, Europe, 5642m; Vinson, Antarctica, 4897m; and Kosciusko, Australia, 2228m/Carstenz, Oceania, 4884m. Most of the book is comprised of touching personal accounts from climbers who have reached the summit of a particular mountain; even diary entries, such as Jasuko Namba's whilst she was on Everest on the 10th May, 1996: her last diary entry before a freak storm killed her and 7 other climbers in one of Everest's worst disasters. The back of the book includes diary contributions with short bios of the contributors, as well as a table of all of the successful `seven summiteers'. Seven Summits is a very classy and professional book, as you would expect from this specialist non-fiction genre. Photos are plentiful, and always outstanding. The writing style (presumably Steve Bell's) is superb, and captures the emotions that these mountains evoke wonderfully. It is worth noting that the Editor, Steve Bell, is the director of a superb mountaineering expeditions company called Jagged Globe, based in Sheffield, UK; so if this book inspires you enough (and it probably will), head for www.jagged-globe.com.Whether you're a elite mountaineer or just simply interested in mountains, this book is well worth buying. A similar highly recommended book is `On Top of The World' by Richard Sale & John Cleare, which documents the world's 14 highest mountains, all in the Himalayas. It's similar to Seven Summits but a little bigger; but of course it doesn't capture the delights of other mountain ranges around the world like what Seven Summits does. Go on, buy it; buy both! You won't be disappointed!