Heights of adventure

Press, 23 January 1988, Page 26

Heights of adventure

Seven Summits. By Dick Baas and Frank Wells with Rick Ridgeway. Pan, 1887. 336 pp. $17.95 (paperback). (Reviewed by Nancy Cawley) Admiration tinged with envy will be the reaction of most people to the achievement of the Americans Dick Bass and Frank Wells to be the first to climb the highest mountain in each of the world’s seven continents. Rick Ridgeway, climber and film and travel-writer, was the fly on the tentwall on each of the trips and has written their story. The two adventurers were unlikely contenders for their crowns when they came together by chance in 1981, to discover that each had been nursing the same dream, the same "outrageous fantasy” for some time. Both men were in their fifties, and both lacked any real experience in mountaineering, especially Wells. He had climbed one mountain, 30 years before.

Ridgeway writes, “What made them think they had a chance? Part of it was naivete — they knew so little about high altitude mountaineering they didn’t realise just how preposterous their proposal was. But part also was their strong conviction that with enough hard work and perserverance they could accomplish anything they set their minds to.” Besides their drive to succeed, both men were successful businessmen with substantial money and clout behind them. (For purists, this may seem to have given them an unfair advantage, but let’s face it, money can’t keep your reluctant body moving up the icy slopes of Everest, and money can’t stop your nose getting frost-bitten on the wind-torn Vinson Massif in Antarctica.) "Seven Summits” is a fast-moving and readable book, spiced with that light-hearted clowning and repartee that is uniquely North American. For once the jacket-blurb, and the commendations by such luminaries as Clint Eastwood and Robert Redford, do not lie. This is an inspiring story of a modern crusade of epic proportions. The undoubted star of the piece is Dick Bass, without whom the project

would have never happened. A poetryspouting extrovert, blessed as Ridgeway puts it, with "unabashed romanticism,” he is also a hard-hitting businessman with oil and ranching interests, who owns popular Snowbird ski resort in Utah. A larger-than-life hero, Bass tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade his second wife to be married on the summit of the Matterhorn, and was probably equally unsuccessful in trying to convince a mystified Masai warrior that he should sample the powder snow of the “Bird,” when the team were climbing Africa’s Kilimanjaro. Expansive invitations from Bass resulted in the inclusion on the climbs of such alpine celebrities as English mountaineer Chris Bonington, American Yvon Chouinard, and Alaskan marathon sledger Susan Butcher. The book is dedicated in part to Marty Hoey, the young professional woman mountain guide, who died on the first of their four attempts on Everest.

Frank Wells gave up his job as president of Warner Brothers to climb the seven summits, and is now president of Walt Disney Company. Although it is not stressed in the book, in the end Wells scored only six and three-quarter summits. After a valiant three attempts on Everest, he gave in to his wife’s pleas and did not join Bass on his fourth successful climb of the world’s highest mountain. Possessing little of the stamina and physical co-ordination heeded for mountaineering, Wells doggedly improved his performance, and at the celebratory shin-dig on a mountain-top above Snowbird (80-piece orchestra, 150-voice choir, 300 invited guests) in August 1985, Frank Wells got welldeserved equal billing with his old buddy Bass. They had achieved their impossible dream. The seven continents and their highest mountains are: Europe — Elbrus (Russia); South America — Aconcagua (Argentina); North America — McKinley (Alaska); Africa — Kilimanjaro (Tanzania); Australia — Kosciusko; Antarctica — Vinson Massif; Asia — Everest.