Seven Climbs: Finding the Finest Climb on Each Continent
Charles Sherwood Vertebrae Press, 2020
The Salvesen Range rises above the fjords and glaciers of South Georgia. Home to some of the world’s fiercest winds and flanked by an iceberg-strewn ocean, this is as remote and otherworldly a mountain range as might be told of. You’ll probably want offshore boat support, as there’s really no other way to approach the range. Your odds of rescue are pretty much zero. One other thing: you might want to be partner at a private equity firm to have the means to get there (and back in time for the next portfolio review). These are among the qualities that place it on Charles Sherwood’s quest to experience the finest climbs on each continent; in essence, a subjective, but hardly arbitrary, take on the seven summits. Needless to say, just getting to the Salvesen Range is high adventure and an opportunity to travel to places so remote that its denizens struggle to recall their ability to maintain a conversation.
Lists help us make sense of the chaos that is the world and often our lives. For contingent geophysical reasons our home world is divided into seven continents, each with their own amazingly unique summits. They may not be the highest, but they each of these seven require dedication to the craft of alpinism in the broadest sense of the word. High altitude fitness in the case of Ama Dablam, big wall skills to get up the The Nose, perseverance to traverse Mount Keny and summit Alpamayo and Aoraki (Mount Cook), and a high level of all-round ability to climb the North Face of the Eiger.
Each of these climbs is given an account, along with some of the lore associated with it and a sense of the personal motivations that frame the undertaking. Although neither political correctness nor philosophical reflection nor public school humour are entirely expunged from this book, Seven Climbs gets to the heart of what it means to aspire to something, what it takes to realize it, and the lasting value of achievement. These are not virtues to be taken lightly.—tom Valis