Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25044
.- ...., The seven summits-each continent's highest peak-stand there, massive, looming, taking on all comers. (Actually, there are two different lists some count Australia's Mt Kosciusko instead of Indonesia's Carstensz Pyramid.' Long to climb this septet? Here are the basics for each peak. Whether you organize your own group or go with a travel company, Gordon Janow, director of operations for Seattle-based Alpine Ascents International, recommends that you guide. "It reduces ACONCAGUA, C RDILLERA ANDES, ARGENTINA 22,834 FEET � Just east of the Chilean border, Aconcagua (pronounced Ah-kong-KAH-gwah) is the highest mountain in the Western Hemisphere. The easy trail up-it's a nontechnical climb-takes five days starting from Puenta del Inca, a military and tourist outpost. The s�ries of refuges along the way are small and climbers many-so bring a tent. This is a good place to see how you deal with altitude. And when you get to the top, you'll see the entire Andes, Chile and the P.acific the west and the plains of Argentina to the east. OPTIMUM SEASON: LATE DECEMBER TO FEBRUARY TEMPERATURE: oaF TO -1 0aF MIT COST: $40 FOR TREKKERS, $80 FOR CLIMBERS LANGUAGE: SPANISH � There are a lot of ways to make a mountain. Some of them are volcanoes, giant magma pimples that rise from the landscape almost in stantaneously; some are the byproduct of the slo-mo bump-and-grind of tecton ic plates. Stephen Koch, a 29-year-old mountain wunderkind from Jackson, Wyoming, knows only one way to take them down: First he climbs up and then he snow boards home. Over the past four years, Koch has shouldered the bold (or, some might say, suicidal) mission of tackling the Seven Summits-the highest peak on each conti nent. The Summits are the moth er mountains, riddled with treacherous fissures, cut with steep troughs of black ice, and soaring with di zzying couloirs. Peri lous enough for clim bers, they're unthi nkabl e for all but a handful of snowboard jockeys. But Koch isn't the first fe llow to dream of standing on top of the seven conti nents, he's just the first one crazy enough not to walk back down them. The Seven Summits mystique is a relatively recent phenomenon, and, fo r many serious clim bers, one with dubi ous ori gins. One afternoon in 1981 , oil tycoon Dick Bass and the late Warner Bros. wheel Frank Wells, both close to 50 at the time, met in a Hollywood studio mess hall and turned the idea of climbing the Seven Summits into a gentlemen's game. even ummits are not ni cal perspective," he says, "It's really just an excuse for a series of exoti c holidays." In fact, the enterprise of li st-making in ath letics prompts li ttle more than a smirk out of man'y career climbers. "Why not climb the seven summits beginning with the lette r M?" Child wonders. "I t's a gimmick, but it's a good gimmick." Gimmick or not, these mountai ns can hardly be recommended to the dilettante. At a total height of more than 140,000 feet, they occupy some of the most inhospitable locales on earth: from the frozen interior of Antarctica to the political th ickets of Chinese Ti bet.