Climbing related quotes 

The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this, "What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?" and my answer must at once be, "It is no use." There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behavior 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. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. It's no use. So, 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 enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for. George Leigh Mallory, 1922 

You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know. Rene Daumal 

Near the foot of the mountain we visited a yogi who dwelled in a hollow tunneled beneath a boulder. He pondered our notion of climbing Shivling and said: "First travel, then struggle, finally calm." Greg Child 

You've climbed the highest mountain in the world. What's left ? It's all downhill from there. You've got to set your sights on something higher than Everest. Willi Unsoeld 

We commenced plugging up in foot deep steps with a thin wind crust on top and precious little belay for the ice-axe. It was altogether most unsatisfactory and whenever I felt feelings of fear regarding it I'd say to myself, 'Forget it!? This is Everest and you've got to take a few risks.' Edmund Hillary 

I told him of my concern about avalanche danger on the route but Peter was full of confidence. He had watched the face on many occasions, he told me, and had never seen an avalanche sweep down.? I argued no longer. I too had never actually seen an avalanche falling down the face, although they must come down sometimes, I felt, judging from the debris at the bottom. [...] I don't think there is anything very clever about killing yourself off, or even about having a fall and surviving. Edmund Hillary advising his son Peter on intended ascent of the West Face of Ama Dablam, which ended with an avalanche 

Mountains are not fair or unfair - they are just dangerous. Reinhold Messner 

The mountains will always be there, the trick is to make sure you are too. Hervey Voge 

In this short span between my fingertips and the smooth edge and these tense feet cramped to a crystal ledge, I hold the life of a man. Geoffrey Winthrop Young 

If you don't let go, you can't fall off! Jerry Moffat 

Height has nothing to do with it, it is your strength that counts. Lynn Hill 

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 

Doubly happy, however, is the man to whom lofty mountain-tops are within reach John Muir 

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night, in the dusty recesses of their minds, awake in the day to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes to make it reality. T.E. Lawrence 

We took risks. We knew we took them. Things have come out against us. We have no cause for complaint. Scott, found in his diary after the party froze in Antarctica 

The pleasure of risk is in the control needed to ride it with assurance so that what appears dangerous to the outsider is, to the participant, simply a matter of intelligence, skill, intuition, coordination- in a word, experience. Climbing in particular, is a parodoxically intellectual pastime, but with this difference: you have to think with your body. Every move has to be worked out in terms of playing chess with you body. If I make a mistake the consequences are immediate, obvious, embarrassing, and possibly painful. For a brief period I am directly responsible for my actions. In that beautiful, silent, world of mountains, it seems to me worth a little risk. A.Alvarez 

To qualify for mountain rescue work, you have to pass our test. The doctor holds a flashlight to your ear. If he can see light coming out the other one, you qualify. Willi Pfisterer 

If the conquest of a great peak brings moments of exultation and bliss, which in the monotonous, materialistic existence of modern times nothing else can approach, it also presents great dangers. It is not the goal of grand alpinisme to face peril, but it is one of the tests one must undergo to deserve the joy of rising for an instant above the state of crawling grubs. On this proud and beautiful mountain we have lived hours of fraternal, warm and exalting nobility. Here for a few days we have ceased to be slaves and have really been men. It is hard to return to servitude. Lionel Terray 

Climbing is, above all, a matter of integrity. Gaston Rebufat 

Fear... the right and necessary counterweights to that courage which urges men skyward, and protects them from self-destruction. Heinrich Harrer 

I have never turned back in my life ; I shall not do so today. Emile Rey 

If you're ever killed mountain climbing, then all that you've worked for is gone.  Jim Whittaker 

...writing about climbing is boring. I would rather go climbing. Chuck Pratt