The Final Continent: Dick Bass & the Birth of the Seven Summits

An Impossible Dream

In 1981, over dinner in a Salt Lake City restaurant, two middle-aged businessmen hatched an audacious idea that would transform modern mountaineering. Richard ‘Dick’ Bass, a 51-year-old Texas oilman and developer of Utah’s Snowbird ski resort, and Frank Wells, the president of Warner Brothers Studios, made a pact: they would attempt to stand atop the highest point on every one of the seven continents.

At the time, nobody had ever conceived of such an athletic grand slam. Mountain climbing was traditionally focused on national prestige or extreme single-mountain expeditions.

Over the next four years, Bass pursued the peaks with relentless energy. He summited Denali in North America, Aconcagua in South America, Mount Elbrus in Europe, Kilimanjaro in Africa, Mount Kosciuszko in Australia, and, on April 30, 1985, achieved the summit of Mount Everest in Asia.

Only one summit remained: Mount Vinson (4,892 m), locked within the frozen interior of Antarctica.

“They told me Antarctica was off-limits, that private citizens couldn’t go there, and that a businessman in his fifties had no business climbing on the polar ice cap. I told them that dreams don’t come with an expiration date.” — Dick Bass, Seven Summits, 1986

The Great Polar Airlift

In the mid-1980s, private travel to Antarctica was virtually unheard of. The continent was governed exclusively by national scientific research stations, and government transport planes like the US Navy Hercules were strictly forbidden from carrying private tourists or commercial climbers.

To solve the impossible logistics, Bass sought the guidance of Nicholas Clinch, the veteran leader of Vinson’s 1966 maiden ascent. Clinch connected Bass with Giles Kershaw, an audacious British bush pilot who possessed unmatched experience flying small aircraft in polar conditions.

Kershaw managed to modify a twin-engine Douglas DC-3 with giant skis and long-range auxiliary fuel tanks, daringly flying from Punta Arenas in Chile across the stormy Drake Passage to land on the blue ice runway of the Ellsworth Mountains. Joining Bass on the ice was David Breashears, one of the finest high-altitude mountaineers and cinematographers in American climbing history.

The March up the Branscomb

Stepping onto the ice at the base of the Sentinel Range, Bass and Breashears strapped on snowshoes and harnessed themselves to heavy sledges. The temperature hovered near -35°C, with violent winds howling down the glacier.

Under Breashears’s expert guidance, the party ascended the Branscomb Glacier, navigating between massive crevasse chasms and establishing high camps beneath the Vinson headwall. Bass, now fifty-five years old, moved with steady, bulldog determination, refusing to give in to exhaustion or the biting polar frost.

On April 30, 1985, Bass and Breashears pushed across the Vinson Plateau and climbed the final rocky arête to the summit.

History on the Polar Apex

At 2:00 PM on April 30, 1985, Dick Bass stood upon the summit of Mount Vinson: 4,892 metres above sea level.

He had done it. In standing atop Vinson, Dick Bass became the first human in history to stand on the summit of all seven continents. He had climbed Denali, Aconcagua, Elbrus, Kilimanjaro, Kosciuszko, Everest, and Vinson, turning what critics had called a midlife fantasy into a global sporting milestone.

Bass’s achievement touched off an international phenomenon. His 1986 book, Seven Summits, became a worldwide bestseller, inspiring generations of mountaineers and establishing the Seven Summits as the ultimate badge of global alpine achievement.