Climbing Mountaineering Quotes & Sayings

I came to win, came as I always do, in order to justify who I am and what I have become; now I don't even know what that is. The rot inside me, the cancer of desire, feels unbearable, now it knows it won't be sated. There's a malignant discontent in there, and without a climb there will be no peace. When - if - I pass over to normal life I know I will drag this feeling with me. — Andy Kirkpatrick

It's not dying that is the problem, he said. 'Climbing is like a lover, and your wife knows this. Whenever you are together, no matter how much you love your family, your thoughts are only of your lover, of climbing. — Andy Kirkpatrick

How to get the best of it all? One must conquer, achieve, get to the top; one must know the end to be convinced that one can win the end - to know there's no dream that mustn't be dared ... Is this the summit, crowning the day? How cool and quiet! We're not exultant; but delighted, joyful; soberly astonished ... Have we vanquished an enemy? None but ourselves. Have we gained success? That word means nothing here. Have we won a kingdom? No ... and yes. We have achieved an ultimate satisfaction ... fulfilled a destiny ... To struggle and to understand - never this last without the other; such is the law ... — George Mallory

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

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

Like it or not taking risks, by a total commitment to the mountain and the vagaries of the weather, is essential for the greater satisfaction to be derived from mountaineering. — Doug Scott

The rope connecting two men on a mountain is more than nylon protection; it is an organic thing that transmits subtle messages of intent and disposition from man to man; it is an extension of the tactile senses, a psychological bond, a wire along which currents of communication flow. — Trevanian

Pucky lads, a wee bit over their heads. — Doug Scott

Yes, we had made and excursion into another world and we had come back, but we had brought the joy of life and of humanity back with us. In the rush and whirl of everyday things, we so often live alongside one another without making any mutual contact. We had learned on the North Fae of the Eiger that men are good, and the earth on which we were born is good."(p.126) — Heinrich Harrer

The fact that I am still alive, when so many friends and others climbing the 8000ers have died is humbling ... It is only death that has stopped many mountaineers from achieving the full tally of 14. — Alan Hinkes

For me, the value of a climb is the sum of three inseparable elements, all equally important: aesthetics, history, and ethics. Together they form the whole basis of my concept of alpinism. Some people see no more in climbing mountains than an escape from the harsh realities of modern times. This is not only uninformed but unfair. I don't deny that there can be an element of escapism in mountaineering, but this should never overshadow its real essence, which is not escape but victory over your own human frailty. — Walter Bonatti

As de Saussure said, risk-taking brings with it its own reward: it keeps a "continual agitation alive" in the heart. Hope, fear. Hope, fear - this is the fundamental rhythm of mountaineering. Life, it frequently seems in the mountains, is more intensely lived the closer one gets to its extinction: we never feel so alive as when we have nearly died. — Robert Macfarlane

Because it's there. — George Mallory

K2 is not some malevolent being, lurking there above the Baltoro, waiting to get us. It's just there. It's indifferent. It's an inanimate mountain made of rock, ice, and snow. The "savageness" is what we project onto it, as if we blame the peak for our own misadventures on it. — Ed Viesturs

I just love all this,' Walt says. 'The sights, the smells, making the effort and pushing yourself and getting something that's really hard to get. I'll fly on a plane and people will look out the window at thirty thousand feet and say, 'Isn't this view good enough for you?' And I say no, it's not good enough. I didn't earn it. In the mountains, I earn it. — Mark Obmascik

Climbing has taught me many lessons, one of the most important being, just how ever-present death is. Having faced death a few times now while climbing, has made me realize that I have no fear of it. — Mekael Shane

Admittedly, man is small and insignificant in nature's scheme; but he is part of it. And are we to think less of the man who exposes himself to nature's forces than of him who just delights in looking at her, safe from dangers and tempests? Even those ridiculous earthworms know that an icicle can "sneeze"; but they have learned by obervation when and where it happens, and will do their best to avoid the danger with clear-eyes alertness and which they owe to their own daring. They are not deaf; they too hear the mighty voice of the mountains, but they understand and interpret it in a different way from those who enjoy it so passively and with such self-satisfaction. — Heinrich Harrer

They say you can't do it, but sometimes it doesn't always work. — Casey Stengel

I like the mountains because they make me feel small,' Jeff says. 'They help me sort out what's important in life. — Mark Obmascik

People ask me, 'What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?' and my answer must at once be, 'It is of no use.'There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behaviour of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron ... If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to live. That is what life means and what life is for. — George Mallory

It's a tough lesson: There is no summit that comes before you expect it. — Mark Obmascik

John Wayne never wore Lycra. — Ron Kauk

Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory. — Ed Viesturs

For the stone from the top for geologists, the knowledge of the limits of endurance for the doctors, but above all for the spirit of adventure to keep alive the soul of man. — George Mallory

Er, I say, are you going to be able to get me out? — Eric Shipton

The american climber Mark Twight, mentor of the Grivel climbing team, commented, "Now every ill-prepared sad sack whose ability falls short of his Himalayan ambitions can get on the radio, call for help, and expect the cavalry to save the day"
- on Tomaz Humar's rescue from Rupal Face of Nanga Parvat. — Bernadette McDonald

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

Difficult struggle in mountaineering is our rise above himself, is the voice of freedom. — Wojciech Kurtyka

too young to live, too old to die — Jeffrey Rasley

A healthy person that uses medical oxygen to perform their job on a daily basis should expect to eventually become a sick person. — Steven Magee

One of the differences between us was that Marc wanted very badly to climb the Eiger, while I wanted very badly only to have climbed the Eiger. Marc, understand, is at that age when the pituitary secretes an overabundance of those hormones that mask the subtler emotions, such as fear. He tends to confuse things like life-or-death climbing with fun. — Jon Krakauer

I like to think of Everest as a great mountaineering challenge, and when you've got people just streaming up the mountain - well, many of them are just climbing it to get their name in the paper, really. — Edmund Hillary

Classic mountaineering grows out of a traditional romantic imagination. Its heart is the feeling, its path is blood, sweat and tears, and its restriction is God. — Wojciech Kurtyka