Guides

Casey and CTSS owner Mike Hamill started their guiding careers the same inaugural class on Mt Rainier in 2000 and have worked together all over the world since then. In that time Casey has amassed an incredible resume of guided and personal climbs and become a trusted friend and our Chief Everest guide.
Casey hails from Ohio where he got his start indoor rock climbing before venturing on to outdoor rock and ice. Mount Rainier in Washington State, USA is still his bread and butter and he has tallied more than 200 ascents of the mountains. Casey takes pride in being a well-rounded climber, which has led him from the ice routes in Canada to the rock climbs of Yosemite. He’s just as happy on hard ice and rock routes as he is sharing his love for the mountains on Rainier, Kilimanjaro, in Ecuador and on Everest.
Casey is a consummate professional who is always going out of his way to make sure that his teams are well prepared, well trained and ready for the challenges that lie ahead. He inspires confidence amongst those who climb with him and we have yet to meet a client who hasn’t loved climbing with him. He is masterful at getting clients on the summit and trouble-shooting along the way to make sure they have the highest chance of success. We can’t say enough good things about Casey’s leadership.

Roberto Gomez IFMGA Guide trained at the ENSA school in Chamonix, with more than 12 years of experience guiding and helping clients to achieve their objectives. Roberto is an Instructor at the Montana Guiding School in Bolivia and South America. He is passionate about rock climbing, ice climbing, cycling and is a lover of the freedom and nature of the mountains.

Roberto is one of our Bolivian guide specialists but he guides throughout South America and New Zealand. He is currently based in Wanaka, NZ where he is working as a fulltime internationally certified guide. If you join us for climbs in Bolivia you will certainly meet and climb with Roberto!

In loving memory of Mike Gardner (1991 – 2024)

Michael Gardner was raised by mountains. He was a second-generation mountain guide who spent his childhood in the Teton Range in Wyoming, the San Juans in Southwest Colorado, and the Himalayas. Michael’s life was undoubtedly shaped by time spent in the mountains.

His guiding apprenticeship began informally at age eight under the tutelage of his father and led him to become one of the youngest guides in the U.S. In addition to his lifelong relationship with guiding and climbing, Michael was a professional skier on the World Tour circuit for many years, and in 2014, he received his bachelor’s degree in Education.

Michael was continually drawn to the wildest reaches of the planet—from Antarctica to Alaska and the Himalayas. For Michael, being in the mountains was more than just a profession; it was a lifestyle. He found inspiration in pursuing his own alpine objectives on some of the wildest peaks in the world, and his legacy leaves behind multiple first ascents and ski descents across Alaska, the Himalayas, and the Western U.S.

Michael will be deeply missed and remembered by the Climbing the Seven Summits team.

Ossy is one of our Mt Everest, Mount Vinson and Aconcagua specialists.

He regularly leads private clients on Everest for us and is a very popular guide with our teams. He is very patient and adept at understanding client’s strengths and weaknesses to maximize their success.

Ossy has summited Mt Everest 3 times including once without oxygen from the North side and has summited Manaslu without O2 as well.

Ossy was born and raised in Ecuador and knows his country’s peaks intimately. He has climbed Pik Lenin, the difficult West Face of Huayna Potosi, Pumori, Aconcagua’s South Face, the Dolomites, and throughout South America, the Cassin Ridge on Denali among many other routes.

Ossy is a fully internationally certified IFMGA guide.

Kris and CTSS owner Mike Hamill met for the first time during the autumn of 2002 on Cho Oyu 8201m, and have been friends ever since. With over 30 years of climbing,

Kris has spent his entire life dedicated to experiences in the mountains. He has been leading expeditions throughout the greater ranges of the world for last two decades and holds the IFMGA/UIAGM certification as a mountain guide. Along with guiding the iconic routes of the world he has also pioneered new ascents as well as descents on skis from Antarctica to the Himalaya and often with guests. While born and raised in wide open spaces of Montana in the United States, he now resides in Chamonix, France at the foot of Mont Blanc with his family.

Sydney is a Colorado native, so naturally, she has been in love with skiing since she was 3-years-old.

At 18 she started her guiding career as a raft guide in the front range of the Rockies and became enamored with working in the outdoors.

For years she honed her backcountry skills skiing and climbing in France, Chile, Colorado, and Tahoe, and she is so happy to be able to share her love for human-powered adventures with others.

Sydney has worked at Squaw Valley on Ski Patrol for 4 seasons and guiding was a natural progression. Recently, she was accepted to the AMGA’s Ski Guide track. Once the skiing dries up in the summers, you can find Sydney guiding trips on Mount Shasta and working in the Tahoe basin.

Tomas was born in Patagonia, Argentina and at an early age as became a climber in the Nahuel Huapi National Park. He has completed a large number of rock and ice climbing routes, backcountry skiing descents and climbs all around the world such as Mt. Everest and Mt. Lhotse (8.516 mts.), the 4th highest peak in the world, without using supplemental oxygen (May, 2012). He is a certified Mountain Guide from the EPGAMT and a member of the Argentinean Mountain Guides Associations (AAGM) and has extensive experience leading expeditions on Mt. Aconcagua, which he has repeatedly ascended, as well as on other peaks in the Central Andes, Patagonia, Pakistan, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Antarctica including 14 expeditions to Vinson and in the Himalayas in Nepal. During the winter season, he guides backcountry skiing, mostly on the volcanoes in Patagonia. He feels very privileged to work as a mountain guide and to be able to share experiences with people that have the same passion. He lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Fred began guiding on Mt. Rainier in 1993 and has been pursuing a life in the wild places of the world ever since. He has climbed and guided in the Alaska, the Himalayas, Antarctica, South and North America and Europe. During this time he has also held positions as an Incident Commander and Aviation Manager for the Bureau of Land Management’s Wildland Fire program as well as the role of a lead guide at a premier helicopter skiing operation based in Nevada’s Ruby Mountains.

Along with his guide work Fred is currently working with an Antarctic based logistics company as an aviation coordinator and safety adviser helping to train their staff in risk assessment and emergency response.

Mike Hamill is the owner and founder of Climbing the Seven Summits and is one of the world’s premier high-altitude guides and expedition leaders. Mike has led more climbers to the summits of 8000m peaks including Everest than any other guide- 200+ summits on 31 X 8000m expeditions with an unparalleled success rate.

Mike began his climbing career on the steep rock and ice of New England and New York state. He hails from Hanover, New Hampshire but currently splits time between Seattle and Sydney, Australia.

Mike has been guiding for two decades and is a veteran of well over 120 major high altitude expeditions including 13 to Mt Everest, 11 to Cho Oyu, Manaslu, Shishapangma, the South Pole, Vinson, Denali, Putha Huinchuli, and Ama Dablam, 50 ascents of Mt. Rainier to name just a few. He has summited Mt Everest 6 times, lapped the famed Seven Summits 6 times, and climbed 2 X 8000m peaks (Shishapangma & Cho Oyu) in 8 days, one of only a few people in history to do so.

In 2012, Mike released “Climbing the Seven Summits,” the definitive guide book to the Seven Summits, with The Mountaineers Books. Mike was on Discovery Channel’s “Everest Beyond the Limits” in 2009 and has written for such publications as The Wallstreet Journal and Rock and Ice magazine.