Climbing the Seven Summits: A Comprehensive Guide to the Continents' Highest Peaks

* Full color with 125 photographs and 24 maps including a map for each summit route
* Essential information on primary climbing routes and travel logistics for mountaineers, with historical and cultural anecdotes for armchair readers


Aconcagua. Denali. Elbrus. Everest. Kilimanjaro. Kosciuszko. Vinson. To a climber, these mountains are known as the Seven Summits* -- the highest peaks on each continent. If you've ever dreamed of climbing Denali or Everest, or joining the even more exclusive "Seven Summiters " club, then Climbing the Seven Summits is the guidebook you need to turn your dream into reality.

With Mike Hamill as your guide, you will discover different approaches to tackling the list, as well as details on what you'll need to plan an expedition and what to expect from each climb. For each mountain you'll learn about documents and immunizations, expedition costs, training, guiding options, climbing styles, best seasons, essential gear, day-by-day itineraries, summit routes, maps showing approaches and camps, regional natural history, cultural notes, and even post-climb activities like going on safari in Africa or wine-touring in South America.

Throughout you'll also find helpful and inspiring stories from the likes of Conrad Anker, Vern Tejas, Damien Gildea, Eric Simonson, and other famed climbers. Special insider tips from Hamill, based on his years of experience, as well as full-color photographs of each peak round out this collectible guidebook. And, because there remains some controversy about whether Kosciuszko in Australia or Carstenz Pyramid on the island of New Guinea is the "seventh summit," this guidebook to the Seven Summits actually covers eight mountains!

*Within mountaineering circles there is debate over which peaks are considered the official Seven Summits. For the purposes of this guidebook, the Seven Summits are based on the continental model used in Western Europe, the United States, and Australia, also referred to as the 'Bass list.'

MIKE HAMILL is a professional mountain guide, writer, and photographer.  He regularly leads expeditions to the mountains of the Seven Summits, among others, and has climbed all of the original Seven Summits at least four times, some as many as twenty. He has also climbed them all in the course of one year several times, finishing them in 2008 in 220 days, the tenth fastest time to date, and has been a featured climber on the Discovery Channel's television production titled Everest: Beyond the Limits. Originally from New England and with a B.S. from St. Lawrence University, Hamill has been guiding for more than a decade and calls Seattle, WA home when not on the road. Learn more about Climbing the Seven Summits, and follow along as Matt travels and climbs the world at climbingthesevensummits.com/