Richard "Dick" Bass (born 1929) is the owner of Snowbird Ski Resort in Utah and the first man to climb the "Seven Summits," the tallest mountain on each continent.
Early life
Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1929, Bass moved with his family to Texas in 1932. After graduating from Highland Park High School, he enrolled at Yale University at 16 and graduated in 1950 with a degree in geology. After completing some graduate work at the University of Texas, Bass served two years with the U.S. Navy on board the aircraft carrier USSÂ Essex during the Korean War. In 1953, he returned to Texas to join in the running of the family oil and gas business and ranching operations.
Business and adventure
In 1971, Bass opened the Snowbird Ski Resort. He became prominent in the industry due to his self-proclaimed “blanket curiosity, nonstop verbosity and hyper-enthusiasm.â€
Together with Frank Wells, one-time president of Walt Disney, Bass conceived of the adventure challenge of summiting each of the seven continents: Denali (Mt. McKinley), North America; Aconcagua, South America; Mt. Elbrus, Europe; Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa; Vinson Massif, Antarctica; Mount Kosciuszko, Australia; and Mt. Everest, Asia.
Bass became the first person to achieve the Seven Summits (the highest point on each continent) on April 30, 1985. At the time, he was also the oldest person to have climbed Mt. Everest. He later co-wrote the book Seven Summits describing his achievement. The ascent has been somewhat controversial; Bass's list puts Mount Kosciuszko as the tallest in Australia, but climber Patrick Morrow has put forward that that the tallest mountain in Oceania (which includes Australia) is instead the more difficult Puncak Jaya.
Jon Krakauer's book Into Thin Air opines that Bass's ascent of Mount Everest pulled the mountain into a "postmodern era" wherein commercial guided expeditions became big business and encouraged climbers with limited experience to pay large sums of money to these enterprises in order to ascend Everest.
See also
- List of climbers
- Lists of mountains (for other climbing lists)
- Seven Second Summits
- Volcanic Seven Summits
- Three Poles Challenge
- Explorers Grand Slam, also known as The Adventurers Grand Slam
- Eight-thousander
References
External links
- 7Summits.com, voluminous information within commercial site
- Mount Everest Info One Of The Seven Summits
- 3D Tour of Seven Summits [1] in Virtual Earth
- Essay on the criteria for the Seven Summits
- Carstensz Pyramid and the Seven Summits
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