Feature Story: 7 Summits

Beyond the enzyme products his company sells, Aupperle is a proponent of other unorthodox supplements, including antioxidant products, probiotic bacteria, medicinal silver, and a liquid solution that contains digestible oxygen. Smoked salmon and a meal-replacement product called the ProBar are other favorites for high-altitude adventures. “I have a system down,” he said, noting that he suffered almost no illnesses or altitude sickness while climbing and traveling around the globe.

Take or leave Aupperle’s nutritional advice, but his efficiency on expeditions to peaks from Russia’s Mount Elbrus to Vinson Massif in Antarctica is a case study in how to do the seven summits right.

View from the tent, Camp 3 on Mount Everest
(Click for 7 SUMMITS PHOTO GALLERY)

Carstensz Pyramid, where the practice of smuggling climbers clandestinely in trucks was once a common practice, might be another story. Aupperle said the Indonesian travel company he hired had promised helicopter transport to the base of the remote mountain peak. He said he asked multiple times before leaving the United States. “There was no helicopter when I arrived,” he said.

He took it in stride. He got in the Jeep. Pulled the tarp over his head. And they bumped along. In a few hours, he was in the jungle, hiking toward Carstensz Pyramid for a solo ascent. He set up camp in the Indonesian outback, rock walls towering above.

Early the next morning, he shouldered his pack. The sun was rising as he neared a final ridge. He popped some enzyme capsules, and then he climbed on, unstopping until he reached the top.

—Stephen Regenold is founder and editor of www.gearjunkie.com.

7 SUMMITS CHECKLIST