To Everest Via Antarctica: Climbing Solo on the Highest Peak on Each of the World's Seven Continents - Softcover

Anderson, Robert Mad

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140254005 ISBN 13: 9780140254006

Publisher: PENGUIN PUTNAM * TRADE, 1995

Synopsis

The author tells how he set out with the intention of becoming the first person to climb the highest peak in each of the world's seven continents, unaccompanied. Late in 1995 he hoped to complete the feat by reaching the summit of Everest without oxygen (only two people had ever achieved this), but after several attempts he was foiled by atrocious weather. This is not just an account of the climbs, but an often humorous travel book, ranging from the plains of Africa to the snows of Antarctica.

About this title

About the Author:

Anderson is the Author of Seven Summits Solo, To Everest via Antarctica and Antonovs over the Arctic: Flying to the North Pole in a Russian biplane. 
He led the ascent of a new route on the Kangshung Face, Everest, climbing with a 4 man team including Paul Teare, Ed Webster and Stephen Venables, climbing without Sherpas or oxygen, before going on to ascend the remaining of the 7 summits solo.
More recently, in the Himalaya, he has guided ascents of Everest (twice), Shishipangma, Cho Oyu, and Makalu.
Seven Summits Solo covers his solo ascents of all the seven summits, in a large format coffee table book, also released in a private edition for Rolex. To Everest via Antarctica was published widely, including pirated into a Romanian edition with someone else on the cover - but the story is his.
Anderson has gone on to complete a number of new routes on Mt Vinson in Antarctica, spending the 2016/17 season guiding on both the rarely visited East and the traditional West sides of the peak. 
Anderson is a frequent lecturer for multi-national corporations, with talks and training seminars on leadership, team-building, motivation and achieving larger than life goals with smaller than expected teams. He lives in Singapore and works throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

Review:

7 Summits Solo, (Summit, USA) by Robert Mads Anderson To Everest via Antarctica, Robert Mads Anderson Reviewed by Neil Nelson, The Evening Standard, Wellington, New Zealand Saturday, February 24, 1996
Having spent the past 20 years scaling some of the world's most difficult peaks, American-born Aucklander Robert Anderson set himself a new challenge: to climb the highest peak on each of the world's seven continents.
As an added challenge, he elected to climb them solo.
Ultimately, he failed in his bid, with Everest getting the better of him on two separate occasions. But failure to stand on the top of the world's highest peak doesn't diminish Anderson's achievement or the highly readable accounts he has written of his adventures.
As the price tags would suggest, the two books which have resulted from his seven summits project are totally different.
7 Summits Solo is a large-format, lavishly produced, 160-page volume which includes dozens of superb colour photographs taken by Joe Blackburn during the expedition (Note, nearly all photos in the book are Anderson's).
Anderson's account of the expedition is essentially a précis of the story he tells in To Everest via Antarctica. The 220 page Penguin book (Stackpole Books, USA) contains just a handful of photographs, but includes a far more detailed account of Anderson's adventures.
During the past decade or so, I've read numerous accounts of climbing expeditions: this one rates as one of the best.
Unlike some mountaineers, who feel compelled to describe in minute detail everything they did during the expedition, Anderson concentrates more on the adventures he had actually getting to the mountain.
He admits it is more of a travel book than a book about climbing and that he wrote it for a broader market.
Some chapters have little to do with climbing at all. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Anderson's descriptions of his travels in Russia, late in 1992, after conquering Mt Elbrus, Europe's highest peak. With Elbrus out of the way, and three weeks left on his Russian visa, Anderson decided the opportunity to see some of Russia was too good an opportunity to miss.
With the Russia of old rapidly being split into a series of new countries, and new border crossings appearing at random, it was decided a large bus would be the easiest way of moving around. One was soon found and with several companions Anderson set off for a fascinating tour of parts of Russia which had seldom seen Western tourists. The tales he relates of his journey make for absorbing and humorous reading.
With a degree in writing and a career spent mainly in the advertising industry - the business he set up in New Zealand and subsequently sold helped fund his seven summits project - Anderson wastes few words. He has an economical, easy-to-read style and knows how to tell a good story.
While the price of 7 Summits Solo means it's unlikely to appear on best-seller lists, To Everest via Antarctica deserves to be. One of the most enjoyable books I read in 1995, I look forward to reading of Anderson's further adventures.

About this edition

• Publisher: PENGUIN PUTNAM * TRADE
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0140254005
• ISBN 13: 9780140254006
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 219