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Shortly before attempting to summit Mount Everest in 2011, Martin Frey paid a visit to Snowbird founder Dick Bass for some advice from the first man to take in views from the top of seven continents.

Frey, about to hit leg four of his seven-summit odyssey, received Bass' "Seven Summits" book, a "good luck" and a poem that echoed in the soul of one tireless adventurer to another — "Unsubdued" by Samuel Ellsworth Kiser. The final stanza reads: "But name me not with the defeated, tomorrow again, I begin."

"It was very inspirational to me on Everest and some of the other mountains when it got rough and you had to dig deep," Frey said. "I recited that poem."

Frey, 56, would go on to surpass Bass, conquering not only mountains but waves on his way to becoming the first person to summit the highest peaks on all seven continents and sail the seven seas. His journey finished in Seattle in April, 11 years after summiting Mount Kilimanjaro in 2005.

He came by a love of water honestly — raised by a fisherman father before buying a sailboat at age 10 with money he earned recycling newspapers. Frey solidified a hunger for adventure after moving to Utah in 2003 and exploring the Wasatch Mountains.

"I was used to playing around in the ocean, but I wasn't used to mountains," said Frey, a former Silicon Valley executive who lives in Holladay.

Six years later, Frey and his friend Steve Gasser summited Mount Denali after six days in whiteout conditions stuck in a tent at 17,000 feet elevation.

Gasser died suddenly at age 46 while riding in the Tour de St. George in 2010, a combination of devastation and motivation for Frey to finish what the duo had started.

"All of a sudden, I'd lost my climbing partner and my great friend," Frey said. "By then, I'd sort of taken on the seven summits; partly because I still felt like I hadn't been fully challenged and partly because it was something Steve and I had cooked up on Denali. That's where it took off."

Frey's peak-conquering pace picked up, with Mount Aconcagua (South America), Everest (Asia), Mount Elbrus (Europe), Carstensz Pyramid (Indonesia), Mount Kosciuszko (Australia) — which of the peaks is included in the seven summits is in dispute — and Mount Vinson (Antartica) all toppled before the end of 2012.

Already a great accomplishment, he cross-country skied to the South Pole from Mount Vinson, bought a yacht over a satellite phone and set sail on a family endeavor with his wife, Kym, and daughter Lily to traverse the seven seas.

"Rather than me going off and climbing a mountain, I wanted to bring Kym and do something that met my need for adventure, and we had a handicapped daughter, Lily, and we wanted to take her with us and put all this together," he said.

Kym Frey said she was "on board quickly, no pun intended."

She added: "He really buckled down and we started planning out what we wanted to do. As soon as he did the summits, that's when we knew we wanted to do the sailing."

The second half of Frey's expedition took him through the North Atlantic, South Pacific, Indian Ocean, South Atlantic, Southern Ocean, Arctic Ocean and North Pacific from March 2013 to the finish line last month — Kym and Lily joining whenever possible.

Frey doesn't have an answer for which is harder — climbing peaks thousands of feet high or battling waves in 100 mile per hour winds — but says both are "cold."

"They're both tough challenges and you have to respect each one for what it is and you have to adapt your own mental fortitude to be able to be successful and make each one of them work," Frey said.

Still healing and turning over new layers of skin a couple of weeks after docking in Seattle, Frey reflected on peering over the frozen Antarctic plateau as a memory that sticks out among thousands of moments.

"Your capacity to endure to the end increases and my sense of myself is much larger or expanded than when I started this whole thing," he says.

Now, he's a public speaker, posing a question forged in self-reflection over thousands of nautical miles and vertical feet: "What's your Everest?"

"That's what I hope to do, is to challenge people a little bit," Frey said. "To think big and go after it."

Twitter: @BrennanJSmith —

Seven Seas

North Atlantic • Completed sail from Gibraltar to Saint Martin on March 26, 2013

South Pacific • Completed sail from Saint Martin to Brisbane, Australia, on Nov. 3, 2013

Indian Ocean • Completed sail from Torres Strait to Cape Town, South Africa, on Oct. 23, 2014

South Atlantic • Completed sail from Cape Town, South Africa, to Fortaleza, Brazil, on Dec. 12, 2014

Southern Ocean • Completed sail from Ushuaia, Argentina, to Antarctic Mainland near Argentine Islands on Jan. 21, 2015

Arctic Ocean • Completed sail from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, to Nuuk, Greenland, via the Northwest Passage on Aug. 24, 2015

North Pacific • Completed sail from Qingdao, China, to Seattle on April 17, 2016 Seven Summits

• Mount Kilimanjaro (Africa) — Summited August 21, 2005

• Denali (North America) — Summited June 25, 2009

• Mount Aconcagua (South America) — Summited January 11, 2011

• Mount Everest (Asia) — Summited May 20, 2011

• Mount Elbrus (Europe) — Summited August 6, 2012

• Carstensz Pyramid (Oceania) — Summited October 6, 2012

• Mt. Kosciuszko (Australia) — Summited November 10, 2013 (since some consider it to be part of the Seven Summits, not Carstensz Pyramid.)

• Mount Vinson (Antarctica) — Summited December 5, 2012

Seven Seas

• North Atlantic — Completed sail from Gibraltar to Saint Martin on March 26, 2013

• South Pacific — Completed sail from Saint Martin to Brisbane, Australia on November 3, 2013

• Indian Ocean — Completed sail from Torres Strait to Cape Town, South Africa on October 23, 2014

• South Atlantic — Completed sail from Cape Town, South Africa to Fortaleza, Brazil on December 12, 2014

• Southern Ocean — Completed sail from Ushuaia, Argentina to Antarctic Mainland near Argentine Islands on January 21, 2015

• Arctic Ocean — Completed sail from Dutch Harbor, Alaska to Nuuk, Greenland via the Northwest Passage on August 24, 2015

• North Pacific — Completed sail from Qingdao, China to Seattle on April 17, 2016