Quotes & Sayings About High Altitude

I worked the extremely long night shifts for three years on the 13,796 feet very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea and I noticed during that time that my mating cycle was being repeatedly triggered. It cleared up when I left for my next job. — Steven Magee

I'm really high ... I mean the altitude of course. — Eddie Vedder

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

Because of the high altitude, you get drunk really fast. So everyone's drunk all the time. — Clea Duvall

Never trust a high altitude astronomer. — Steven Magee

Infinite Jest not only says that being human is hard work; it makes us work hard. It not only suggests we put ourselves in service to something larger than ourselves; it is one of those larger somethings. That's its rhetorical genius, and is how Wallace gets his self-help "to fly at such a high altitude": Like AA, it is theory and praxis in a single stroke. Or: It is what it says, which may be the purest form of art. — Garth Risk Hallberg

Image intensifiers, which ultimately became "night vision" Fiber optics Supertenacity fibers Lasers Molecular alignment metallic alloys Integrated circuits and microminiaturization of logic boards HARP (High Altitude Research Project) Project Horizon (moon base) Portable atomic generators (ion propulsion drive) Irradiated food "Third brain" guidance systems (EBE headbands) Particle beams ("Star Wars" antimissile energy weapons) Electromagnetic propulsion systems Depleted uranium projectiles — Philip J. Corso

In order to fly you have to create space in the open air so that your wings can really spread out. It's like a parachute. They only work from a high altitude. To fly you have to begin taking risks. If you don't want to, maybe the best thing is just to give up, and keep walking forever. — Jorge Bucay

A review of summit day photographs will show that I was clothed in the latest, highest quality, high altitude gear, comparable, if not better, than that worn by the other members of our expedition. — Anatoli Boukreev

Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai 'Ngaje Ngai', the House of God. Close to the western summit there is a dried and frozen carcas of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude. — Ernest Hemingway,

It was the ghetto. I had seen them before from the high altitude of one who could look down and pity. Now I belonged here and the view was different. A first glance told it all. Here it was pennies and clutter and spittle on the curb... Here was the indefinable stink of despair. Here modesty was the luxury. People struggled for it... Here sensuality was escape, proof of manhood for people who could prove it no other way... Here hips drew the eye and flirted with the eye and caused the eye to lust or laugh. It was better to look at hips than at the ghetto. — John Howard Griffin

High on its flanks is a complex of caves where the kings and heroes of the Mountain Kingdoms have been laid to rest, their bodies preserved by the sub-zero temperatures and thin, high-altitude air. — Philip Reeve

Hal loathes sky-and-cloud wallpaper because it makes him feel high-altitude and disoriented and sometimes plummeting. — David Foster Wallace

And now it is boring; here in Tanzania, she is bored. She will die of a crushing monotony before she even has a chance at a high-altitude cerebral edema. - — Dave Eggers

It sometimes ends in uncommon elevation, indeed; but only at the gallows. And besides, when a man is elevated in that odd fashion, he has no proper foundation for his superior altitude. Hence, I conclude, that in boasting himself to be high lifted above a whaleman, in that assertion the pirate has no solid basis to stand on. — Herman Melville

But despite the maturity of the basic F4U design, the risks involved in flight-testing design changes remained. On 8 July 1946 test pilot Dick Burroughs was killed while attempting to land at the Tweed New Haven Airport following an engine failure in the XF4U-5. Later that year, project pilot Bill Horan survived a risky bail out of an F4U-5 following an engine failure during a high altitude dive test over Long Island Sound. — Ralph Harvey

and I have seen them all, stars such as John Wayne (Jet Pilot with Janet Leigh), or George C. Scott (Not With My Wife, You Don't with Virna Lisi), or William Holden (The Bridges at Toko-Ri with Grace Kelly) all fly with their visors up and their oxygen masks dangling loose. I assume this is to let the cameras record them acting. No real pilot flies like that. Without a visor, the high altitude glare would blind me and — Ed Cobleigh

As a sea level adapted human, I am more fearful about the radiation levels on top of high altitude mountains, mile high modern cities and inside jet aircraft than from nuclear reactors and bombs, as that is where I get the most radiation exposures in the modern world. — Steven Magee

the euphoria of bee handling, like an altitude high or the rapture of the deep. It — Margaret Atwood

After decades of hauling telescopes around in the back of vans and going up to high altitude locations and so forth, I did finally build an observatory, here on Sonoma mountain. — Timothy Ferriss

When the full moon was out the other night, it created one of the most spectacular scenes that I have seen in the Alps. The high glaciers of the Mont Blanc range were glowing an eerie bright blue-white, and they looked like huge ghost ships in the dark ocean of sky, sailing amongst black mountain valleys.

There were no clouds, and the moon was a huge and perfect disc tracking across the sky, shining on different parts of the glaciers through the night.

Looking up, I saw the black silhouette of the mid-altitude mountains below the ethereal shining high-mountain terrain, which created a weird vision: the ghostly glaciers floating, and appearing separate, contrasting sharply with the dark valleys beneath.

The Aiguille Verte especially, being so steep and isolated, seemed almost like a holographic mast with sails, plowing into the rolling waves, chasing after the Mont Blanc summit with its billowing spinnaker... — Steve Baldwin

The amount of people I met that had heart problems surprised me in high altitude astronomy. I had not seen it in other fields. After a decade of working at high altitudes, I was also diagnosed with a heart problem. — Steven Magee

The wars of the future will be fought by computer technicians and by lawyers and high-altitude specialists, and that may mean war will be increasingly abstract, hard to think about and hard to control. — Michael Ignatieff

Thanks to President Obama, I am able to get medical treatment in the USA for the long term effects of very high altitude sickness and unnatural electromagnetic radiation exposures. — Steven Magee

This one's my other favorite. 'He's successful in interfacing with clients we already have, but as for new clients, it's low-hanging fruit. He takes a high-altitude view, but he doesn't drill down to that level of granularity where we might actionize new opportunities.'"
Clark winced. "I remember that one. I think I may have had a minor stroke in the office when he said that. — Emily St. John Mandel

Is getting filthy rich still your goal above all goals, your be-all and end-all, the mist-shrouded high-altitude spawning pond to your inner salmon? — Mohsin Hamid

I stopped snowboarding as I started to recognize symptoms that corresponded with radiation sickness when at high altitude ski resorts. — Steven Magee

Three Moonie 65-megaton hydrogen bombs exploded nearly simultaneously at very high altitude. With no air around the bombs to absorb the initial blast of the explosions, and convert the energy into mechanical shock waves - - all the nuclear energy blasted out in its electromagnetic form. It was a brutally intense pulse of Compton recoil electrons and photoelectrons that created huge electric and magnetic fields that were MURDER on sensitive electronic equipment at tremendous distances. The electro-magnetic fields, coupled with electric and computer systems, producing huge voltage spikes in the circuits and damaging current surges along all signal paths, fusing precision engineered memory and micro-boards and virtual drives and CPUs into fried silicon laced junk! Nanobots to Nanoscrap in Nanoseconds! — @hg47

The stresses of high-altitude climbing reveal your true character; they unmask who you really are. You no longer have all the social graces to hide behind, to play roles. You are the essence of what you are. — David Breashears

As to rocket ships flying between America and Europe, I believe it is worth seriously trying for. Thirty years ago persons who were developing flying were laughed at as mad, and that scorn hindered aviation. Now we heap similar ridicule upon stratoplane or rocket ships for trans-Atlantic flights. (1933)
[Predicting high-altitude jet aircraft for routine long-distance travel.] — Auguste Piccard

While flying with several other USAF pilots over Germany in 1957, we sighted numerous radiant flying discs above us. We couldn't tell how high they were. We couldn't get anywhere near their altitude. — Gordon Cooper

But until then, and right now, the sun is bright, the air is cool, my head is clear, there's a whole day ahead of us, we're almost to the mountains, it's a good day to be alive. It's this thinner air that does it. You always feel like this when you start getting into higher altitudes. — Robert M. Pirsig

Indian Ballistic Missile Defence Programme is an initiative to develop and deploy a multi-layered ballistic missile defence system to protect from ballistic missile attacks. Introduced in light of the ballistic missile threat from Pakistan and China, it is a double-tiered system consisting of two interceptor missiles, namely the Prithvi Air Defence (PAD) missile for high altitude interception, and the Advanced Air Defence (AAD) Missile for lower altitude interception. The two-tiered shield should be able to intercept any incoming missile launched 5,000 kilometres away. India became the fourth country to have — SABARINATHAN. K

The lasting physical and mental health effects of long term very high altitude exposure appear to be remarkably similar to daily heavy smoking. — Steven Magee

I regard taking healthy sea level adapted children to the 13,796 feet very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea as a form of child abuse. — Steven Magee

Get going. Move forward. Aim High. Plan a takeoff. Don't just sit on the runway and hope someone will come along and push the airplane. It simply won't happen. Change your attitude and gain some altitude. Believe me, you'll love it up here. — Donald J. Trump

Peace. The upland serenity of high altitude, the openness of grassland without indigenous bush or trees; the greening, yellowing or silver-browning that prevailed, according to season. — Nadine Gordimer

You're a little bit of a show-off. First you get us out of hell. And then you defeat like the biggest, baddest Watcher on the books, and then you go on a high-speed, very high-altitude chase, and then you resuscitate the dead. Are you done? Because seriously, I don't know if I can take any more excitement. — Cynthia Hand

The summit of Mauna Kea should never have been developed as it is not safe for humans up there. I am now locked into an endless loop of doctors visits for what appears to be classic very high altitude heart, lung & brain damage because I was unfortunate enough to have worked there. — Steven Magee

The decision to rely heavily on high-altitude air power, target urban infrastructure and repeatedly attack heavily populated towns and villages has reflected a deliberate trade-off of the lives of American pilots and soldiers, not with those of their declared Taliban enemies, but with Afghan civilians ... There will be no official two-minute silence for the Afghan dead, no newspaper obituaries or memorial services attended by the prime minister, as there were for the victims of the twin towers. — Seumas Milne

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

I've been through the entire list of Polar problems. I knew it would be hard, but it's harder than I ever thought it would be. I've suffered from blisters, a high-altitude cough, frost nip, and I even managed to break a ski they told me was unbreakable. — Lewis Clarke

My favorite Aspen memory is saving an upside-down cake that had exploded from the high altitude. — Emeril Lagasse

I'm not a big fan of the high-altitude approach of mega TV ads. — Foster Friess

You got no fuckin idea how bad it gets. I'm not you. I can't make it on a couple a high-altitude fucks once or twice a year. You're too much for me, Ennis, you son of a whoreson bitch. I wish I knew how to quit you. — Annie Proulx

I am an amateur mountain climber. Once or twice a year I go off to Chamonix in the French Alps, under Mont Blanc, and with a guide do treks that include rock climbing at high altitude. — Robert Littell

By analyzing data from Greenwich Observatory in the period 1836-1953, John A. Eddy [Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and High Altitude Observatory in Boulder] and Aram A. Boornazian [mathematician with S. Ross and Co. in Boston] have found evidence that the sun has been contracting about 0.1% per century during that time, corresponding to a shrinkage rate of about 5 feet per hour. And digging deep into historical records, Eddy has found 400-year-old eclipse observations that are consistent with such a shrinkage. — Jonathan Sarfati

And give me some coffee. Black as midnight on a moonless night."
Harga looked surprised. That wasn't like Vimes.
"How black's that, then?" he said.
"Oh, pretty damn black, I should think."
"Not necessarily."
"What?"
"You get more stars on a moonless night. Stands to reason. They show up more. It can be quite bright on a moonless night."
Vimes sighed.
"An overcast moonless night?" he said.
Harga looked carefully at his coffee pot.
"Cumulus or cirro-nimbus?"
"I'm sorry? What did you say?"
"You get city lights reflected off cumulus, because it's low lying, see. Mind you, you can get high-altitude scatter off the ice crystals in
"
"A moonless night," said Vimes, in a hollow voice, "that is as black as coffee. — Terry Pratchett

Very high altitude observatories are a known worker health hazard. — Steven Magee