Guidebooks, gear lists and the companies side by side, for all 8 of the 7 summits
The relaunched 7summits.com takes a climber from the first of the 7 summits to the last: a free guidebook for every peak, a gear list for every mountain, the companies that guide each one compared side by side, and a place on the record at the end.
Amsterdam, 28 October 2026. Climbers planning the highest mountain on each continent can now read a full guidebook to every one of them for free. 7summits.com, online since 2000, has relaunched with 8 guidebooks, one for each peak on both versions of the list, so Kosciuszko and Carstensz Pyramid each have their own.
The guides to Aconcagua, Denali and Everest grew out of Harry Kikstra's printed Rucksack Readers guidebooks and have been expanded and brought up to date; the other five were written for the site. Each covers permits and costs, the best season, acclimatisation, every route stage by stage and the country around the mountain. Route chapters carry topographic maps with the camps and elevation profiles, and the pages on permits and access are checked every month.
Pack for it
Every mountain has its own gear list, written from the kit lists expedition operators and climbers use today, from base layers to the technical kit each route asks for, and every item has a page of its own explaining what it is for. A personal gear shed sits beside it: tick what you already own, and each peak shows what is still to get, so the kit for the next summit builds on the last one.
Choose who to climb with
The operator directory lists 129 companies with 496 trips read off their own websites. For each peak the companies stand side by side, filtered by price and country, so a climber can see at a glance who guides the route they want, and compare them before writing to any. The forum has a room for every mountain, and the library holds 1,058 books and films for the long evenings before a trip.
With a free account, "My 7 summits" keeps track of the peaks done and the ones planned. Expedition membership (€70 a year, or €7 a month) adds the guides as PDF and EPUB ebooks, every route as a GPX file, an offline pack for a phone out of signal and comparison of up to 7 operators side by side. Summit Circle (€177 a year) adds an hour of one-to-one planning with Harry Kikstra, who has guided on six of the 7.
Finish it
When the seventh summit is done, one click sends the application for the finisher record, which now holds 811 climbers from 82 countries. Listing is free, and a person checks every application against its evidence. Every finisher gets their own page with each summit and date, and a badge for their own website that links to it and stays up to date.
All guidebooks · Everest · Aconcagua · Denali · Kilimanjaro · Elbrus · Vinson · Carstensz Pyramid · Kosciuszko
About 7summits.com
7summits.com is an independent reference for the 7 summits: route guides to all 8 peaks, the record of everyone known to have finished them, a directory of the companies that guide them, a library, news and a forum, in English, Dutch, Spanish and German. It has been online since 2000 and is owned, written and built by Harry Kikstra, a Dutch climber, photographer and writer based in Amsterdam. He completed both lists by 2008.
Press contact: Harry Kikstra, through 7summits.com/contact. Facts, pictures and files, free to use: 7summits.com/press.
This release in its other versions: for everyone, the count, for operators.