#explore7summits

A few days earlier I’d been standing on the summit of Mount Elbrus, Europe’s highest peak, finishing another peak on my Seven Summits Solo project. The climb was behind me, and the long journey home had begun—Moscow to London, and hopefully on to New York. What follows is the original chapter from my book, written as it happened: a story of leaving Russia, chasing flights, and unexpectedly…

Every so often, someone asks me, “Why Everest?” They ask with curiosity, often laced with a bit of skepticism, and often with the unspoken assumption that maybe—just maybe—it’s time to take on something less ambitious. Something safer. And in my case, also something more age-appropriate. After all, my daughter Phoebe has proclaimed me a Geezer. Since then I’ve led a successful expedition to the…

Everest 25 audio For a quick listen, under 5 minutes of audio above will get you the highlights, and lowlights too perhaps, of Everest 2025. The 2025 Everest season was a dichotomy of technology and tradition on Everest. From record-breaking ascents in under a week, to no supplemental oxygen summits, to Sherpa climbers setting yet more benchmarks, to others with records both too numerous and too…

High on Everest, the air thins and the margin for error disappears. For decades, climbers have turned to oxygen tanks, acetazolamide (Diamox), dexamethasone, and occasionally even sheer grit, to get them to the top of the world. But with the 4 British Climbers summiting today using Xenon Gas for the first time, now a new way to climb is floating about —almost literally—onto the Everest scene:…

There was the nearly extinct, rather huge, and endemic to Ball’s Pyramid, stick insect. It lived with but a few of its kind, on the tallest volcanic sea stack on earth. Then the Pyramid, rising 561 metres (1842 feet) straight up out of the middle of the blue, blue Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand. And there was the rock itself, with but a few ascents, all by large teams. It really was…

In March each year, Sir Edmund Hillary’s Himalayan Trust raises funds through its Summit Challenge, to support its’ work in Nepal. By building schools and hospitals, staffing them and running programs on the ground there, they provide support directly to the people of Nepal. If you have been fortunate enough to visit the worlds’ tallest peaks, experienced this remarkable country and the people…

https://www.explore7summits.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Everest-With-Scott.mp3 An hours listening to this will take you from Nepal, up Ama Dablam (just for a bit of acclimitasation) and into Tibet for a rapid ascent up the North Ridge of Everest with climber Scott Cutlan.   It’s a unique perspective, with his strong and unedited take on everything from the theme park of Everest’s South Side,…