Monk with video camera
Andrea Cardona of Guatemala climbed the 7 summits in four years and seven months, from Aconcagua in February 2008 to Carstensz Pyramid in September 2012, and skied the last degree to both poles in between. She was the first Central American woman on Everest and the first Latin American to finish the Explorers Grand Slam.
Hannah Otto has ridden up and down Kilimanjaro in a single day, the first woman known to have done it, and pedalled the last 3 km on a broken leg. Read about the ride, her preparation, who went before her, and the cause she rode for.
Kilimanjaro National Park allows mountain bikes on one route towards the summit: the Kilema rescue track to Horombo, then the Marangu path to Kibo and a carry to the crater rim. What riding it involves, what the park charges, who has done it, and two easier rides for everyone else.
Parts of Kosciuszko National Park will be closed on weekdays from 9 to 27 November 2026, between 5:45 am and 8:15 pm, while the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service targets feral deer and pigs. The operation is separate from the wild horse programme, which remains suspended pending a population survey. Walkers planning the summit walk should check the NPWS closure map before travelling.
At the 2026 UIAA General Assembly in Kathmandu, the Nepal Mountaineering Association asked for international recognition of six Himalayan summits above 8,000 metres as separate mountains. Four sit in the Kanchenjunga massif and two on the Lhotse ridge near Everest. If all six were accepted, the world list would grow from 14 to 20, with Nepal holding 14 of them. The proposal is still subject to international assessment.
Video circulating since 2 November 2026 shows a large avalanche running down a slope on Mount Elbrus in the Russian Caucasus and covering part of a tourist complex. No official count of injuries or deaths had been issued by Russian authorities when TV Azteca published its reports, with damage assessment still under way. Elbrus is the 7 summits peak of Europe, and its south side carries lifts, huts and a busy winter resort.
Guatemalan climber Andrea Cardona reached the summit of Everest on 23 May 2010 and completed the Explorers Grand Slam in 2012, skiing the last 111 kilometres to each pole between December 2011 and April 2012. She now runs Un Paso Más, a health app built around what she learned on the mountains. Here is what her own account of the climb records.
Eleven married couples in our finisher record have both climbed the 7 summits, and nine of them reached their last summit together on the same day. Here is who came first (it depends on the question), the couple who married on the summit of Vinson, the pair who flew from the summits by paraglider, and the couple who climbed all eight in 380 days.
Carlos Soria climbed Elbrus in 1968, at 29, and finished the 7 summits on Kilimanjaro in January 2010, at 70. Alongside them he took on the 14 peaks above 8,000 metres, with ten of his ascents up there coming after his 60th birthday. In 2025, at 86, he became the oldest person to climb one.
The typical 7 summits finisher takes about seven and a half years from the first summit to the last, and about one in twenty does it inside a year. The longest on our record took almost 43. What the dates show, and why we only speak in years.
On 30 April 1985 Dick Bass became the first person to climb the highest mountain on every continent. Seven Summits, written with Frank Wells and Rick Ridgeway, is the story of two businessmen in their fifties who set out to do it in a year and took five, and the book that turned the idea into a list people still count by.
The news from the 7 summits for 26 October – 1 November 2026. Aconcagua season opening delayed by snow and avalanche risk. Nepal suspends high-altitude trekking as cyclone nears. Tyler Andrews sets new EBC-to-Lukla speed record. Plus 6 more stories from the mountains, the permit offices and the screen.
