TO THE SUMMIT: A WOMAN'S JOURNEY INTO THE MOUNTAINS TO FIND HER SOUL. New York, 1997, 1st edition. 327 pp, color photos. The inspiring story of a woman who overcame personal despair, and discovered the joy of mountaineering on a pilgrimage to the Seven Summits that ultimately saved her life.
After beating bulimia and the twin addictions of alcohol and cocaine, climbing mountains would probably seem like a walk in the park. For Margo Chisholm, author of To the Summit, her quest to become the first woman to climb the highest mountain on each continent-- known to the mountain-climbing community as 'the Seven Summits'-- was her victory march. Traveling from Africa to Antarctica to the Himalayas, Chisholm chased her dream, scaling mountain after mountain, with only Everest eluding her. Hardcover, DJ, Fine.
From the dust jacket:
Margo Chisholm was well past her fortieth birthday when she decided to do something truly extraordinary. Raised in a privileged and protected world of private schools and posh clubs, Margo was a seriously overweight alcoholic with a $1,000 a week cocaine habit when she turned her life around and got clean, sober, and fit.
Early in her addictions, she became friends with Jonathan Wright, an accomplished professional photographer and dedicated adventurer and climber who invited Margo to join him on a trek into his beloved Himalayas - a feat Margo knew she was both physically and emotionally incapable of performing. Years later, Jonathan's memory would help sustain her on her quest for a seemingly impossible dream that his life had inspired: to become the first woman in history to scale the highest peak on each of the Earth's seven continents.
In 1988, Margo climbed her first two mountains - summiting Mt. Kenya and the awesome, intimidating Mt. Kilimanjaro. An 'ordinary' middle-aged woman with no formal mountaineering training and no previous experience, she had met and triumphed over the toughest demands and conditions that Nature could provide. But that was just the beginning. Spurred on by her newborn love affair with the world's loftiest peaks and most beautiful and inaccessible places, she pushed herself even further, taking on increasingly greater climbing challenges as she pursued more difficult and dangerous goals under the most harrowing of circumstances.
And somewhere along the way - amid magnificent wildernesses of towering pinnacles and breathtaking, ice-covered vistas - Margo Chisholm realized she had reached a summit deep within herself; a place in the heart and soul where she discovered the pride, fulfillment and inner peace she had always longed for.
