Seven Summits Read Online Free PDF

said.
    “Likewise,” I said, still staring around the room.
    Frank then turned to the others, “Okay boys, meeting's over. I’ve got some important business.”
    After Frank outlined his plan to me, I said, “Maybe you ought to go on a one-day climb first. You know, to see if you like it.” He agreed.
    We got together the next weekend at Sespe Gorge, a rock cliff near my hometown of Ventura. I brought my neighbor Yvon Chouinard and another visiting climber, Al Steck. Both are among the best-known climbers in the United States. (Frank later said it was like getting invited to your first golf game with Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus.)
    Chouinard and Steck went off on another route and I took Frank up a crack in the 400-foot-high wall that had a 5.7 rating, meaning it was easy-to-moderate by mountaineering standards—to Frank it looked impossibly vertical. About halfway up, he was having trouble. The technique on such a climb is to jam your hands and feet in the cracks, but Frank was pawing the rock searching for footholds, his hands bleeding from incorrectly jamming them. Panting hard, he looked up and said, “What do you say we practice that thing where you slide down the rope. What do you call it—rappel?”
    “Sorry, but we have to finish. Otherwise you'd be disappointed in yourself.”
    Frank paused to absorb this.
    “I took Tom Brokaw up this climb a few weeks ago. He zoomed right up. It was his first rock climb too.”
    “So you mean if I don't make this, word gets out that Brokaw does the climb and Wells wimps out.”
    “You said it, not me.”
    Frank made another move and suddenly his foot shot out and in an instant he was hanging from the rope.
    “Go ahead and hang there for a minute and rest your arms and legs. Then try it again, but this time don't hug the rock. That way you'll stay in balance and won't pop off that foothold.”
    “What foothold?”
    “That edge just above your right knee.”
    “You mean this? It's a quarter-inch wide!”
    “Yeah, it's a big one all right. So just put the edge of your shoe on it and press up.”
    Frank tried again, and fell again. The third time he made it, but he looked very awkward. When we finally reached the top he had several nasty scrapes on the backs of his hands, his knees were bleeding and he had what climbers call sewing machine leg, meaning his legs were vibrating as fast as a needle on a Singer. But he also had a wall-to-wall smile.
    “I’m glad as hell you made me stick to it. Still, do I really need to learn how to climb rock cliffs in order to get up these seven peaks?”
    “Not really, I suppose. They're all mostly walk-up snow slopes with ice axes and crampons. Altitude, avalanches, and crevasses will be your biggest dangers.”
    “Then thanks again for taking me on my first—and last rock climb.”
    As we drove back to Ventura, Frank explained how everything was set for the Russia climb. He had the permit, and his partner Dick Bass was already in Europe. He was checking on a couple of possible ways to get to Antarctica, and he had just contacted a Spanish team going to Everest next year and was hopeful he and Dick might be able to join them.
    I listened, agreeing it was a great idea and a wonderful project, but at the same time wondering if someone who had just shown by all indications that he had absolutely no natural ability as a climber could really get very far on something as grand as what he proposed. Especially a peak like Everest. I had been up above 8,000 meters —26,200 feet—an altitude in mountaineering that is a kind of red line above which any climbing becomes not only extremely difficult but also extremely dangerous, where the severely thin air confuses your perception and judgment, where often even the world's best climbers make fatal mistakes. And listening to Frank, I was certain he had no real idea what it was like up there in what climbers call the death zone.
    Still, it was such a wonderful idea, I didn't want to