Richard Bass

Richard "Dick" Bass is the owner of Snowbird Ski Resort in Utah and the first man to climb the "Seven Summits," the tallest mountain on each continent. There is no relation with the Bass Family of Fort Worth, Texas.

Early life

The Seven Summits on an Elevation World Map. The picture actually shows nine possible summits according to the different definitions of continental borders

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1929, Bass moved with his family to Texas in 1932. After graduating from the St. Mark's School of Texas, he enrolled at Yale University at 16 and graduated in 1950 with a degree in geology. After completing his graduate work at the University of Texas, Bass served two years with the U.S. Navy on board the aircraft carrier USS 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.”

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, Antarctica; Mount Kosciuszko, Australia; and Mt. Everest, Asia.

Bass became the first person to achieve the seven summits on April 30, 1985. On that date, he also held the record for being the oldest person to have climbed Mt. Everest. Details of his adventures were described in a book that he co-wrote, Seven Summits. His feat is not without controversy, as one of the seven summits was the tallest mountain in mainland Australia, and not the tallest in Oceania.

PacRim Coal, co-owned by Dick Bass, is currently in the process of securing state and federal permits to build the largest coal mine in Alaska's history, the Chuitna Coal Project.

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

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