Mountaineering Team Quotes & Sayings

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

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