Local Adventurer To Speak March 1

by Julie Campbell Carlson

Waco attorney Stuart Smith, a Baylor University alumnus, will present a slide show of his climbs of the seven highest mountain summits on the seven continents, including Mt. Everest, and his adventures to the North and South poles at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 1, in room 308 at the McLane Student Life Center.
Smith became the first American and the seventh person in the world to complete the Adventure Grand Slam when he completed a 725-mile ski trip on Dec. 28, 2004, from Hercules Inlet on the west coast of Antarctica to the South Pole. The Adventure Grand Slam consists of successfully climbing the Seven Summits (highest points all the seven continents) plus skiing to the North and South Poles.
Smith scaled his first peak at age 14 while visiting Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado with his family. At age 16 he had climbed Long's Peak, also in Colorado and more than 14,000 feet high. Following a hiatus from climbing while he attended college at Baylor and law school at the University of Texas, Smith returned to the sport by facing the highest mountain in Africa.
"My wife, Elizabeth, and I lived in Kenya for a year as missionaries, and Mt. Kilimanjaro (19,565 ft.) was just a couple hundred miles away," he said.
Since then, he has climbed South America's Aconcagua in 1995, North America's McKinley in 1996, Asia's Everest and Australia's Kosciuszko in 2002, and Europe's Elbrus and Antarctica's Vinson Massif in 2003. In December 2003, he skied the last degree to the North Pole.
Smith's slide show is free and open to the public and is sponsored by campus recreation. For more information, call 710-3315.