Explorer’s Grand Slam Adventures

Lei Wang is the first Asian woman to complete the Explorers Grand Slam
which includes climbing the 7 summits and skiing to the north and south poles!

Aconcagua has been one of my most frustrating mountains so far – it took me three tries to climb it! Aconcagua was my first real challenge I faced and a giant step forward in my burgeoning mountaineering career. I felt it would be a great opportunity to partner up with some other climbers who could help me climb it…read more

Carstensz Pyramid is also known to be one of the most technical of the 7 Summits climbs, requiring good rock climbing skills. This is also a difficult climb because of the political uncertainty in the surrounding area…read more

The season started with unusually bad weather. There were very few summit windows during the month of May, and the expeditions before mine lived through 19 straight days of storm. Moving up to or surviving at high camp under these conditions was already an achievement…read more

I traveled to Russia to climb Elbrus, the highest peak in Europe. We successfully reached the summit on Sept 2 amid the worst weather I’ve experienced in mountains…read more

Lei Summited Mt Everest to become the first Chinese Woman to finish the challenge of Seven Summits and Two Poles. To climb a mountain as high as Mt Everest, we need to gradually expose our body to higher altitude instead of going up in one shot, which a normal person would surely not survive. Every step is hard. read more

I felt frustrated, I thought it was impossible to finish this mountain in my weak condition. I managed to drag through one day after another. It was a fast ascent, and I actually survived the next few days but still felt slow and tired…read more

Mt. Vinson, the highest mountain on the coldest continent, Antarctica, is definitely one of the coldest among the seven summits. The normal temperature on a perfect day is -15F, so even a mild wind would bring wind chill to brutal levels…read more

Taking the lessons that I learned from the South Pole trip, I put some extra time in training hard for the North Pole and found myself much more relaxed and had more fun on this trip…read more