My story begins in the fall of 1973 when I relocated to Salt Lake City, Utah. My goal was to get a job and to learn how to ski the world class powder snow of the Wasatch Mountains. I found a job at the newly opened Snowbird Resort in the Little Cottonwood Valley high in the Wasatch. My job was a door-man and Assistant Concierge at the Snowbird Lodge. The benefits included a free season ski pass with a locker underneath the tram. I had four days a week to ski and I managed to ski 65 days over the season. Life was good.

During this time I met Dick Bass, a Texas oilman, a millionaire and the developer and owner of Snowbird. Mr. Bass was a great guy and he loved the mountains. A short time later Dick Bass began an adventure of scaling the Seven Summits which meant the highest peak in each of the world’s seven continents. Dick partnered with Frank Wells who was a Stanford Business School grad, a highly successful Hollywood executive and an old high school friend of Menlo Circus Club member Mark Davis.

After the snows melted away in the spring of 1974, I became passionate about climbing the Wasatch’s slopes and ridges that rose steeply over the Utah valley to 11,000 foot summits. I was now converted to being a “mountain lover” regardless of the season. Now I was walking on a path based upon aspirations of climbing high mountains. I was able to team up with old college buddies Bob Wyler and Hank Skade and we were committed to climbing together. We called ourselves The Sharks and our motto was “Eat Sharks and Climb Mountains”. The Bass Wells adventure became a success and they co-authorized a book titled “The Seven Summits”. Disciples like us treated this like a bible.

In 1995, I scaled Mt. McKinley now called Denali in Alaska. A low-light of that climb was 30 hours in an ice cave at 16,000 ft. It took 18 days, but we made it to the summit at 20,320 ft. In 1997, Cerro Aconcagua in Argentina was next and the vicious “white winds” of the southern hemisphere. We made it to the top at 22,840 ft. In 2000, the Vinson Massif in Antarctica at 16,650 ft. was climbed at 80 degrees south latitude. The highlight was spending a week with Jim Lovell of Apollo 13 which Tom Hanks played in the movie. In 2007, Mt. Kosciuszko in Australia at 7,800 ft. In 2009, with my son Patrick, Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania at 19,500 ft. was climbed. This July, with my daughter Bailey and her boyfriend Scott Kocis, Mt. Elbrus in the Caucasus Mountains of Russia at 18,500 ft. was climbed. So, six summits on six continents and all are attributed to whimsical dreams that were hatched many years before at Snowbird and by a love of mountains.

What are the life lessons that have been instilled by these efforts? I dream about mountain adventures but the lessons lie in the overall journey, training, questioning, blocking out anxieties, being determined and taking things that you face “step by step”. What about the Seventh Summit, Mt. Everest? The dreams are there and I purchase lotto tickets regularly and it’s another aspiration!