Quotes & Sayings About Climbers

Climbers seem to forget that we said in our introduction that there were simply '50 classic routes', not 'the 50 classics'. We chose 50 from a list of about 120. Only a torturer will ever pry loose from our lips the names of those other 70 classics ... — Steve Roper

The Moon's low gravity and slow rotation mean that a space elevator could be built with materials already available. The honeycomb fiber called M5 is lighter and stronger than Kevlar; a ribbon 3 centimeters wide and 0.02 millimeter thick could support 2,000 kilograms on the lunar surface or 100 climbers with a mass of 600 kilos each, evenly spaced along the ribbon. We could build a lunar elevator right now. — Chris Impey

That is the great danger of meritocracy: the people who reach the top of the system are precisely the people who have most completely identified with the system and its demands, creating a vicious circle preventing any actual change. It is no accident that conservatives tend to employ the rhetoric of social mobility so readily, as social climbers generally do not ask questions about the ladder. — Adam Kotsko

Empty vessels make the most noise. It is true. The best adventurers and climbers, and the most successful people I know in life, are all great listeners, and they don't talk too much. — Bear Grylls

The eight-man expedition was pinned down in a ferocious blizzard high on K2, waiting to make an assault on the summit, when a team member named Art Gilkey developed thrombophlebitis, a life-threatening altitude-induced blood clot. Realising that they would have to get Gilkey down immediately to have any hope of saving him, Schoening and the others started lowering him down the mountain's steep Abruzzi Ridge as the storm raged. At 25,000 feet, a climber named George Bell slipped and pulled four others off with him. Reflexively wrapping the rope around his shoulders and ice ax, Schoening somehow managed to single-handedly hold on to Gilkey and simultaneously arrest the slide of the five falling climbers without being pulled off the mountain himself. One of the more incredible feats in the annals of mountaineering, it was known forever after simply as The Belay. — Jon Krakauer

I love to read about the exploits of technical mountain climbers, but I've never done any vertical climbing. — Will Hobbs

But the chapel, that will never be prosaic. Those who have seen it outlined against the sunset or the full moon, those who have seen its sloping leaded roof-top glisten after a shower of rain, those who have looked down upon the world from its summit, all those who have seen these things will remember the poetry that it has taught them. And while each man changes from year to year, going through the continual changes that make a lifetime, the chapel remains always the same. When the rest of Cambridge is crumbling and in ruins, the chapel will still be standing, the last to fall to time as it is the last to fall to climbers. — Whipplesnaith

I feel at home up in the air, just like sailors do at sea and climbers do in the mountains. — Felix Baumgartner

We were like the Mount Everest climbers stepping over frozen corpses from prior climbing disasters in our quest for the summit. Like those climbers, we were motivated by a fear far greater than death - the fear of not reaching the top. — Mike Mullane

I've climbed with some of the best climbers in the world, more importantly, to me, they are some of the best people in the world. That's another reason why I climb. — Jim Wickwire

Some of our superiors were indeed men of brains and learning and disinterested goodwill, but some were stuffed shirts, and some incompetents, and some timid souls escaping the fray, and some climbers, and some as bitter and jealous as some of us were at being inadequately appreciated. But still there they were, up in the sunshine above the smoke, a patch-elbowed tweedy elite that we might improve when we joined it, but that we never questioned. Especially during the Depression, when every frog of us was lustful for a lily pad. — Wallace Stegner

There's a lot of mountain climbers trapped inside of bodies of people behind the counter at Kinko's. — Henry Rollins

And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far into the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
Page No. 31, Freedom Climbers — Rainer Maria Rilke

That I was a swimmer made no waves; it seems to be a law of human nature
that those who live by the sea are suspicious of swimmers, just as those who live in the mountains are suspicious of mountain climbers. — Yann Martel

But we are all insane, anyway. Note the mountain-climbers. — Mark Twain

Climbing for speed records will probably become more popular, a mania which has just begun. Climbers climb not just to see how fast and efficiently they can do it, but far worse, to see how much faster and more efficiently they are than a party which did the same climb a few days before. The climb becomes secondary, no more important than a racetrack. Man is pitted against man. — Yvon Chouinard

The rules of the game must be constantly updated to keep up with the expanding technology. Otherwise we overkill the classic climbs and delude ourselves into thinking we are better climbers than the pioneers. — Yvon Chouinard

To be a climber one has to accept that gratification is rarely immediate. — Bernadette McDonald

The mountain is a mirror, where climbers look to find themselves. They discover their frailty, take heart from their strengths, drink deep of the insights. — Lincoln Hall

You can say that climbers suffer the same as the other riders, but they suffer in a different way. You feel the pain, but you're glad to be there. — Richard Virenque

Social climbers strive to be aristocrats but their efforts prove them no such thing. Aristocrats do not strive; they have already arrived. Swing is a state of arrival. — Craig Lambert

Enthusiasm is the great hill-climber. — Elbert Hubbard

I think our storytellers - our songwriters should be great storytellers, and they should be mountain climbers and explorers, because music is something that can cross all different borders. — Jason Mraz

Because it's there.
-George Mallory, one of the first climbers to attempt Everest, when asked why he wanted to climb it. (He disappeared into a cloud near the summit in 1924, where his body was found in 1999.) — Stephen Bezruchka

When the climbers in 1953 planted their flags on the highest mountain, they set them in snow over the skeletons of creatures that had lived in the warm clear ocean that India, moving north, blanked out. Possibly as much as twenty thousand feet below the seafloor, the skeletal remains had turned into rock. This one fact is a treatise in itself on the movements of the surface of the earth. If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone. — John McPhee

A voice said, "Climb." And he said, "How shall I climb?the mountains are so steep that I cannot climb."
The voice said, "Climb or die."
He said, "But how?I see no way up those steep ascents. This that is asked is too hard for me."
The voice said, "Climb, or perish, soul and body of theemind and spirit of thee. There is no second chance for any son of man. Climb or die."
Then he remembered that he had read in the books of the bravest climbers on the hills of the earth that sometimes they were aware of the presence of a Companion on the mountains who was not one of the earthly party of climbers.
And he rememberd a word in the Book of Mountaineers ... it heartened him,for it told him that he was created to walk in precarious places, not on the easy levels of life. — Amy Carmichael

I continued with whatever 'qualified climbers' I could con into this rather unpromising venture. — Warren G. Harding

Rock climbers and long-distance ocean swimmers will tell you it isn't the mountain or the water that kills - it is panic — Gavin De Becker

I explained I wanted to descend as quickly as possible to camp IV in order to warm myself and gather a supply of hot drink and oxygen in the event I might need to go back up the mountain to assist descending climbers. — Anatoli Boukreev

More climbers die during the descent than on the way up."
Karakaredes seems to be considering this. After a minute he says, "Yes, but here on the summit, there must be some ritual ... "
"Hero photos," gasps Paul. "Gotta ... have ... hero photos."
Our alien nods. "Did ... anyone ... bring an imaging device? A camera? I did not. — Dan Simmons

We took risks. We knew we took them. Things have come out against us. We have no cause for complaint. — Robert Falcon Scott

Climbing is a process - like yoga or running. We want to go to the spots where we're barely able to hold on. Those are the climbs that force us to become better athletes and grow as climbers. — Chris Sharma

Personally, I would rather climb in the high mountains. I have always abhorred the tremendous heat, the dirt-filled cracks, the ant-covered foul-smelling trees and bushes which cover the cliffs, the filth and noise of Camp 4 (the climbers' campground), and worst of all, the multitudes of tourists which abound during the weekends and summer months. — Yvon Chouinard

I think Himalayan climbers tend to mature fairly late. I think most of the successful Himalayan climbers have ranged from 28 to just over 40, really. — Edmund Hillary

Dad used to say, "Death is a part of it all." I say it's the ugly part. But it's why I'm here, why Eiger climbers come. We come because they died, and by dying they created this legend, and we want to be a part of the legend, without dying. — John Harlin

The whole idea of comparing climbers is ludicrous. It would be like sitting Van Gogh down with Rembrandt and saying, Ready, get set, go. — Pat Ament

Mountain climbers think of the mountain not of the danger. — Marty Rubin

Most people would not attempt to climb Mount Everest on their own. Typically, climbers will look toward Sherpas, who have served as guides for generations in Nepal, high in the Himalayas. They help climbers prepare and show them along the routes that will get them to the top. They are seasoned and know every details of the trails. But your guide is even more essentail if you are to make it back down safely. Coming down the mountain can be the most perilous part. You're tired. Your defenses are down. You may very well fall at the critical moment. You need that guide. As you approach retirement, you are moving to a different phase of life. You are descending the mountain. — Christopher Abts

Never let failure discourage you. Every time you get to the base of a mountain (literal or metaphorical), you're presented with a new opportunity to challenge yourself, to push your limits beyond what you thought possible, to learn from climbers on the trail ahead of you, and to take in some amazing views. Your performance on the mountain you climbed last week or last month or last year doesn't matter - because it's all about what you are doing right now. — Alison Levine

Each climber loses one finger or toe once in a while. This is a small but important reason for Polish climbers success. Western climbers haven't lost as many fingers or toes. — Wanda Rutkiewicz

I said to Scott that the ascent seemed to be going slowly and that I was concerned descending climbers could possibly run out of oxygen before their return to camp IV. — Anatoli Boukreev

Free soloing is almost as old as climbing itself, with roots in the 19th century. Climbers are continuing to push the boundaries. There are certainly better technical climbers than me. But if I have a particular gift, it's a mental one - the ability to keep it together where others might freak out. — Alex Honnold

Like solo sailors venturing into the Southern Ocean, climbers are seduced by risk. The desire to push to a summit or scale a rock face is so strong that they consciously or subconsciously minimize safety precautions drilled into their brains. — Charles Duhigg

I thought again of the mountain climbers we had met as we traveled. They were young and wore brightly colored clothing so as to be easily spotted should they become lost in the snow. They knew the right path to follow to the peaks. The heights were already festooned with aluminum pins; all they had to do was attach their lines to them, and they could climb safely. They were there for a holiday adventure, and on Monday they would return to their jobs with the feeling that they had challenged nature and won. But this wasn't really true. The adventurous ones were those who had climbed there first, the ones who had found the routes to the top. — Paulo Coelho

The strongest climbers aren't always the happiest or nicest to be around; neither are some of them coming from the purest motivation. Climbing another V17 is not going to save the world! This activity of 'rock climbing' is merely one of many ways to exist, pass the time, and evolve and grow from one moment to the next. That's all. — Chris Sharma

As climbers, we need to sacrifice our comfort, our safety, and arguably our sanity, as a tithe to the mountain ... We need the mountains but the mountains do not need us. — Lincoln Hall

Like overzealous religious converts, climbers originally from the lower rungs of society tend to go overboard when they ape the upper class. — Maureen Corrigan

La Griffe, "The Claw." Simple and small. The index finger goes through the hole near the blade. Favored by climbers and boaters. — David Morrell

The deepest part of me is, and will always be, a climber ... No matter where I go, I always feel like a climber. — Stacy Allison

We want climbers to be extremely fit, but we also want you to understand how strength works in climbing and to use training methods that closely resemble the performance demands required by the routes you select.
The — Dan Hague

I noticed a bumper sticker that said, simply, "gravity works." yes it does. Rock climbers know this and plan for it. So do agile coaches. I use this metaphor to illustrate that, in our physical environment, somethings are simply taken as a given. Constant. Always present. Undeniable. So, too, in our work environment. — Lyssa Adkins

Like high mountain climbers who set up a base in the valley at the foot of the mountains and another camp and camp number two and camp number three at various heights on the road to the peak, and in every camp they leave food and provisions and equipment to make their last climb easier and to collect on their way back everything that might help them as they descend, so I leave my childhood and my youth and my adult years in various camps with a flag on every camp. I know I shall never return, but to get to the peak with no weight, light, light! — Yehuda Amichai

I wonder if it's like this for mountain climbers, he thought. You climb bigger and bigger mountains and you know that one day one of them is going to be just that bit too steep. But you go on doing it, because it's so-o good when you breathe the air up there. And you know you'll die falling. — Terry Pratchett

Most climbers aren't in fact deranged, they're just infected with a particularly virulent strain of the Human Condition. — Jon Krakauer

They're so rich and revered that they have neither electricity nor running water. Only social climbers have a sauna and a Jacuzzi. — Jo Nesbo

If we ever have children and they become climbers I'll tell them, Stay away from expeditions. They'll make you poor and neurotic. — Greg Child

There are two kinds of climbers, those who climb because their heart sings when they're in the mountains, and all the rest. — Alex Lowe

There is an interconnectedness among members that bonds the family, much like mountain climbers who rope themselves together when climbing a mountain, so that if someone should slip or need support, he's held up by the others until he regains his footing. — Phil McGraw

To sacrifice the principles of manners, which require compassion and respect, and bat people over the head with their ignorance of etiquette rules they cannot be expected to know is both bad manners and poor etiquette. That social climbers and twits have misused etiquette throughout history should not be used as an argument for doing away with it. — Judith Martin

20 x Clap Press Ups 50 x meters Jog 15 x Burpees 50 x Sprint 20 Bodyweight Squats 50 x meters Jog 20 x Crunches 50 meters Sprint 20 x Kick Through's 50 meter Jog 20 x Mountain Climbers 50 meter Sprint 20 x Press Ups 50 meter Jog On a 400 meter running track break it down into 8 50 meter sections, at each 50 meter point perform the required exercise. Make sure to alternate jogging and sprinting after each exercise. Go through the circuit 3 times. — Stephen Robson

There are two kinds of climbers ... smart ones and dead ones. — Don Whillans

We have produced some good walkers and saunterers, and some noted climbers; but as a staple recreation, as a daily practice, the mass of the people dislike and despise walking. — John Burroughs

My advice for climbers or photographers is to really tune into your own passions and not just what other people are doing or aren't doing. Figure out what works for you, what turns you on, what gives you the greatest amount of energy and feeling of satisfaction. — Galen Rowell

I have a variety of friends I climb with. But the common thing is I trust all of them. They're solid climbers, the sort of people I trust to know what they're doing. — Erik Weihenmayer

Ever since the morning of May 29, 1953, when Tenzing Norgay and I became the first climbers to step onto the summit of Mount Everest, I've been called a great adventurer. — Edmund Hillary

The ability to forge a unique path with occasional dips, detours, and even dead ends presents a better chance for fulfillment. Plus, a jungle gym provides great views for many people, not just those at the top. On a ladder, most climbers are stuck staring at the butt of the person above. — Sheryl Sandberg

They explored me high enough as mountain climbers reached the mountain tops. — Fernando Lachica

Many have questioned the quality of this sort of achievement, deploring the use of pitons, tension traverses and expansion bolts, but the record speaks for itself. This is a technical age and climbers will continue in the future to look for new routes. There is nothing more satisfying than being a pioneer. — Allen Steck

Many climbers become writers because of the misconceptions about climbing. — Jonathan Waterman

I am too slow to be a good climber, so I film instead. — Wanda Rutkiewicz

The best climbers have the will to hold on. They won't give up and keep trying over and over. — Chris Sharma

Climbers have no sense of smell. — Conrad Anker

Climbers are a universal tribe: we share the knowledge that things are not important. Experience is important. Feeling is important. — Steve House

Hasty climbers have sudden falls. — Robert Greene

Merciful heaven, social status is something to be strived for, not born with, or, worse yet, displayed. Social status is a reward for social climbing, a pursuit that may get you the attention of other limelighthers but won't move you up one skinny rung as far as your social station in Dixie is concerned. — Ann Barrett Batson

The reason mountain climbers are tied together is to keep the sane ones from going home. — Gerhard E Frost

There are three things in life I really don't like: Rice pudding. Social climbers - you know, hang-ons! And the photo shoot! — Ivana Trump

Mathematicians have a certain type of mind, and climbers have a certain type of mind, because climbing poses these incredibly interesting problems for them. — Jimmy Chin

Some prevailing signs of social climbers are their:
- ticking cunning ambition
- times of deceit
- hand of wickedness
- gloves of bigotry
- hidden bunch of schemes
- cup of pride
- sip of prejudice
- odour of greed
- grit of hatred
Their favorite hunger is comparing themselves to others. A thirst of competition with sloth, jealousy and anger at their spirits. — Angelica Hopes

Beidleman knew they were on the eastern, Tibetan side of the Col and that the tents lay somewhere to the west. But to move in that direction it was necessary to walk directly upwind into the teeth of the storm. Wind-whipped granules of ice and snow struck the climbers' faces with violent force, lacerating their eyes and making it impossible to see where they were going. "It was so difficult and painful," Schoening explains, "that there was an inevitable tendency to bear off the wind, to keep angling away from it to the left, and that's how we went wrong. "At times you couldn't even see — Jon Krakauer

Mountaineering is the art of getting up mountains by foot and occasionally by hand, and though the climbing is usually emphasized, most ascents are mostly a matter of walking(and since good climbers climb with their legs as much as possible, climbing could be called the art of taking a vertical walk). — Rebecca Solnit

How many words grace the pages of this book!
They are supposed to bestir memory. As if words could remember!
For words are miserable mountain climbers and miserable miners of meaning. They do not retrieve the hidden treasures from the heights or dredge them from the depths!
But there is a living commemoration that softly strokes everything worthy of remembering with its caress. And when a red-hot flame leaps forth, poignant and piercing, from such retrospective ash, and you fix your gaze upon it, as if gripped by its magic spell, then...
But how with a shaky hand and coarse writing instrument can one possibly inscribe oneself in such pure remembrance, other than to stain these white unassuming pages? — Franz Kafka

We [climbers] demonstrate in the most stunning way of all - at the risk of our lives - that there is no limit to the effort man can demand of himself. This quality is the basis of all human achievementit can never be proved enough. I consider that we climbers - that I - serve all humanity. We prove that there is no limit to what man can do. — Walter Bonatti

And just what sort of gentlemen do you imagine now will be paying me court? ... I see ... In other words, social climbers who will not care that I am desperate or old men as desperate as I ... I refuse to marry a mushroom for the manure from which he's sprung. Nor shall I marry an old man to be his broodmare. — Connie Brockway

What I loved about bike racing was that it was not a mainstream sport. My heroes were self-made. There were no coaches, no training centers, and only a handful of sponsors. Training rides were not totally devoted to bike talk. I got to know a lot of riders this way, not just as good sprinters or good climbers, but as people who had ideas different from mine, jobs different from mine, and dreams different from mine. — Steve Tesich

How wonderful is Cold Mountain Climbers are all afraid The moon shines on clear water twinkle twinkle Wind rustles the tall grass Plum trees flower in the snow Bare twisted trees have clouds for foliage A touch of rain brings it all alive Unless you see clearly do not approach — Hanshan

What i took away from witnessing the broken climbers in Moshi was this: *Everything is easy until it isn't.* — Josh Gates

The two climbers looked at each other, a glance that bored all the way down to Medvetz's DNA - not desperate or pleading or frightened but resolved, almost at peace. Here were two men, united in their obsessive enterprise, their trajectories intersecting for just an instant, but an instant that contained some fundamental understanding: the long journey full of failures and setbacks, injuries and disfigurement and pain, propelled by a commitment beyond reason. Here were two men in this inhospitable place, the wind raking across the ridge, the shadows lengthening - one departing his life, the other walking back into it.
"God bless you," Medvetz murmured. "Good-bye."
And then he faced down the mountain and resumed lumbering along the route, toward Brice and Brett Merrell and Mogens Jensen and all the others waiting for him in the world below. — Nick Heil

Men crawl in slime and wallow in the mud;
The Realist groans: "All life is mud ans slime!"
Men lie and steal and shed each other's blood;
And Realism sees but blood and crime.
Yet Right is just as real as Wrong,
The mountain peak is real as the ooze,
A curse is no more real than a song;
Among realities we need but choose.
The cynic sees the failure of To-day,
The Prophet cries the triumph of To-morrow,
Knowing the spirit in our clogging clay
That masters doubt, disaster, loss and sorrow.
Failure is but a passing weariness,
There is no final answer but Success. — Berton Braley

In a general sense, I think it's bad to bring too much money into climbing, since it takes away a little from the beauty of the mountains. But at the same time, I can't blame the Nepali government - or the Indian, Pakistani or Chinese, depending on where you're climbing - from wanting to capitalize on foreign climbers. — Alex Honnold

Everest wasn't like any other mountain. Only one of ten climbers who attempt the mountain stands on the summit. And for every three climbers who do scale the mountain, one dies trying. The facts aren't welcoming. But you don't plan a trip to Everest believing those facts will apply to you. — Stacy Allison

I knew those fuckers were smarter than they appeared. Dammit, first they're runners, now they're climbers. They're breaking all the fucking zombie rules! Juan looked personally insulted by this development. — Rhiannon Frater