Seven Summits
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50 free Seven Summits trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Seven Summits are the highest mountains on each of the seven continents, and standing on top of all of them is one of the best-known challenges in mountaineering. The idea sounds simple, but geographers and climbers still argue about which peaks belong on the list, because nobody fully agrees where Europe ends or what counts as the Australian continent. This quiz covers every peak on the rival lists: Everest, Aconcagua, Denali, Kilimanjaro, Elbrus, Vinson Massif, Kosciuszko and Carstensz Pyramid. Expect questions on where each mountain stands, how it got its name, who reached the top first, and the people who went on to collect the whole set, along with the tougher challenges the idea inspired. It is written for armchair travellers and geography fans as much as for climbers. Most questions can be worked out by anyone who enjoys maps and adventure stories, and a few will test readers who know their mountaineering history.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01News of the first ascent of Mount Everest reached London on the morning of which 1953 royal event?
Elizabeth II's coronation
Elizabeth II's coronation on 2 June shared the front pages with the climb, after a Times correspondent sent a coded message down from Base Camp by runner.
Q 02Edmund Hillary, one of the first two climbers atop Mount Everest, earned his living in which trade?
Beekeeping
Beekeeping filled his summers: he worked 1,600 hives with his father and brother, took up to 100 stings a day, and saved his climbing for winter.
Q 03Which American author published the short story The Snows of Kilimanjaro in Esquire magazine in 1936?
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway opens the story with the frozen carcass of a leopard near the western summit, then follows a writer dying of gangrene on safari.
Q 04Hikers on Aconcagua in 1985 found the frozen mummy of a boy sacrificed by which empire?
Inca
The Inca left the seven-year-old about 5,300 metres up the mountain around 1500 CE, in a child-sacrifice ritual known as capacocha.
Q 05In 1997 an expedition took which off-road vehicle to the East Peak of Mount Elbrus?
Land Rover Defender
A Land Rover Defender reached the East Peak with a team led by mountaineer Alexander Abramov, a stunt that earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records.
Q 06Which mountain represents Asia on the Seven Second Summits list, a tougher technical climb than Everest?
K2
K2 stands 8,611 metres high, and with it on the list nobody finished all seven second summits until Christian Stangl did in January 2013.
Q 07In 1896 a prospector renamed Denali in support of which presidential candidate?
William McKinley
William McKinley became president the following year, and in 1917 the federal government made his name for the mountain official.
Q 08Until 1977, how could visitors travel to within a few metres of the summit of Mount Kosciuszko?
By car
By car: a road ran from Charlotte Pass almost to the top until it was closed to public vehicles over fears for the alpine environment.
Q 09Which British climber, whose body was found on Everest in 1999, vanished near the summit in 1924?
George Mallory
George Mallory was last seen climbing towards the top with Andrew Irvine, and nobody knows whether the pair reached it before they died.
Q 10Which Japanese climber was the first woman atop Everest and the first woman to complete the Seven Summits?
Junko Tabei
Junko Tabei topped out on Everest in 1975, twelve days after an avalanche struck her camp, and completed the set in 1992 on Puncak Jaya.
Q 11Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest free-standing mountain in the world, stands in which African country?
Tanzania
Tanzania's dormant giant rises about 4,900 metres from its plateau base without belonging to any mountain range.
Q 12Aconcagua, the highest mountain outside Asia, stands in which South American country?
Argentina
Argentina keeps the whole mountain, though the border with Chile passes only about 15 kilometres away.
Q 13Denali, the highest mountain peak in North America, rises in which US state?
Alaska
Alaska's giant rises about 18,000 feet above the surrounding plateaus, one of the greatest vertical reliefs of any mountain on Earth.
Q 21Which future Walt Disney Company president climbed six of the Seven Summits in a single year, 1983?
Frank Wells
Frank Wells, a former Warner Bros. executive, was beaten only by Everest, where bad weather turned his party back 3,000 feet below the top.
Q 22Which Italian mountaineer proposed a Seven Summits list with Carstensz Pyramid in place of Mount Kosciuszko?
Reinhold Messner
Reinhold Messner wanted the harder New Guinea peak to stand for the Australian continent, and he was also the first person to climb all 14 mountains above 8,000 metres.
Q 23Which Alpine peak, first climbed in 1786, becomes Europe's highest if Mount Elbrus is counted as Asian?
Mont Blanc
Q 14Mount Elbrus, usually counted as the highest mountain in Europe, stands in which country?
Russia
Russia holds the whole mountain: its twin summits stand eleven kilometres north of the watershed that marks the border with Georgia.
Q 15Puncak Jaya, the highest mountain peak of any island on Earth, belongs to which country?
Indonesia
Indonesia governs the western half of New Guinea, where the peak rises 4,884 metres in the Sudirman Range of Central Papua.
Q 16Mount Kosciuszko was named in 1840 for a general who led a 1794 uprising in which country?
Poland
Poland's Tadeusz Kościuszko also served as a general in the American Revolutionary War, and the peak reminded its namer of a memorial mound to him in Kraków.
Q 17Mount Kosciuszko, the highest mountain on the Australian mainland, lies in which state?
New South Wales
New South Wales holds the 2,228-metre peak inside a national park that shares its name, close to the state's border with Victoria.
Q 18The North Ridge route up Mount Everest, tried by British expeditions in the 1920s, starts in which region?
Tibet
Tibet was the only way in because Nepal barred foreigners at the time; climbers on that side now drive straight to the North Base Camp.
Q 19Which Sherpa mountaineer reached the top of Mount Everest with Edmund Hillary on 29 May 1953?
Tenzing Norgay
Tenzing Norgay had earlier stopped his partner's fall into a crevasse by anchoring the rope with his ice axe, which made him the climbing partner of choice.
Q 20Which Texas businessman became the first person to climb all Seven Summits in 1985?
Dick Bass
Dick Bass was 55 when a guide led him up Everest to finish the set, which also made him the oldest person to have climbed it at the time.
Mont Blanc still counted as Europe's high point in 1956, when William Hackett climbed it on his way to the tops of five continents.
Q 24Mount Elbrus is the highest peak of which mountain range between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea?
Caucasus Mountains
The Caucasus Mountains decide the list: put Europe's boundary on the range's main watershed and the peak is European, put it farther north and it sits in Asia.
Q 25Uhuru Peak, the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, takes its name from the Swahili word for what?
Freedom
Freedom Peak replaced Kaiser-Wilhelm-Spitze, the name Hans Meyer gave the top after he made the first ascent in 1889.
Q 26Which author's account of the 1996 Everest disaster argued the Seven Second Summits were a tougher challenge?
Jon Krakauer
Jon Krakauer was on the mountain with one of the expeditions caught in the storm, and expanded his Outside magazine article into the 1997 book Into Thin Air.
Q 27Which explorer, also disbelieved over the North Pole, falsely claimed Denali's first ascent in 1906?
Frederick Cook
Frederick Cook's summit photograph was traced to a small outcrop now called Fake Peak, and his only companion later swore that they never reached the top.
Q 28Which Hawaiian volcano tops the Pacific Plate on a Seven Summits list drawn from tectonic plates?
Mauna Kea
Mauna Kea stands 4,207 metres above the sea, and measured from its underwater base some authorities call it the tallest mountain in the world.
Q 29Erik Weihenmayer, who finished the Seven Summits in 2002, was the first Everest summiter with which disability?
Blindness
Blindness from juvenile retinoschisis, diagnosed when he was 15 months old, did not stop him climbing Denali in 1995 and Everest on 25 May 2001.
Q 30The Grasberg mine beside Puncak Jaya holds one of the world's largest reserves of which precious metal?
Gold
Gold comes out of the vast open pit together with copper, and the workings lie only four kilometres west of the summit.