Best 85 quotes in «mountaineering quotes» category

If you are looking for a career that may induce a myriad of health conditions into you, I can recommend working at the 13,796 feet very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, USA.

If you ignore the mountain, doesn't mean mountain will ignore you too..

If you're not moving, you're standing still.

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.

In a civilization of wage slaves, where people seek to survive more than to live, mountaineering is an enigma.

Inner harmony is the prerequisite for any climber who seeks to push the frontiers; without it he should give up extreme mountaineering. -Reinhold Messner

Interviewer: What helps to sustain you while you're climbing? Is there a particular Bible verse, or, song or song verse? Poem maybe? Mekael: That's a good question. Thoughts of my three sons, are my constant companions. Thoughts of them, help to keep me focused. As for other sources of inspiration....I'm a music lover. I think all Mountaineers and Poets are music lovers, so, when I'm climbing, I'm either in a Tupac zone, or I may be in a Linkin Park or Creed zone. Interviewer: Any song or verse in particular? Mekael: When during a climb, everything has aligned, Creed's 'Higher' pops into my head. I dig the part in the chorus when they sing..... 'Up high I feel like I'm, alive for the, very first time Set up high, I'm strong enough To take these dreams And make them mine

... I only know that when physical and emotional reserves remain unchallenged, this feeds the spiritual cancer of a life unfulfilled. -Reinhold Messner

I was born to live, in pursuit of the penultimate high. I am guaranteed a Homeric death, when it's my time to die.

Men hensigten, spør folket, meningen, maalet? Der er ingen hensigt, der er intet maal. Tindesporten er meningsløs som selve livet, - derfor kan dens trolddom aldrig dø.

Mountaineers are one of the few groups to celebrate before the finish line. More mountaineers die on the descent than on the ascent.

Mountains are for me, a conservatory. It's there, that I am able to exist in the presence of transcendent sentient and symbiotic beings. From the mountains to the flora and fauna that lives on the mountains, I am both an awed witness to, and a humble beneficiary of their sprits. Sprits which are filled with life enriching light.

No single mountain ever came to me... so I always go to them

Og har han i Kroppen den rigtige Aand, han løfter den staalblanke Ven i sin Haand og klapper ham under hans Hage. O lifligt at skrives i Klatrernes Laug! De Piger og Karle, som dandse paa Flaug ved Sommer har lystelig' Dage.

- og nu er det jeg som står og blir liten på den siste krumning i hyldens blygt hendøende motiv.-Drømmer jeg? Er dette et skridt på en jordisk menneskevei? Kan det være en fjeldvægg, en stivnet form, denne foss av gulgrått sva, dette Niagara i sten, som med lydløs torden styrter sig ned over kanten og smelder i skogen efter et eneste sopende sveip på nærmere tusen meter?

I realized during the research of High Altitude Observatory Disease (HAOD) that the outcome would be bad for not only astronomy, but for Space, airlines, frequent fliers, sky divers, mountaineering, ski resorts, high altitude cities, military, insurance, and so on.

It is said that a man is rejuvenated every seven years- that all his cells are replaced. I wonder, does that also apply to his spirit? - Reinhold Messner

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

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.

It was during my first expedition on Everest, that I first experienced the Puja. The word Puja is a Sanskrit word, Pūjā, and it means, "The worship of a particular God or Goddess." In our case, our Puja was in honor of Sagarmatha. Sagarmatha is the Nepalese name for Everest. We were beseeching her, asking her for not just a safe climb, but thanking her for allowing us an audience. Not trying to sound clichéd, but it was a transcendently beautiful experience.

Mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

[M]ountaineering as a sport both emanates from and addresses itself back to (and back against) the normal patterns of middle class life. One of the dominant discourses of mountaineering [...] positions it critically against "bourgeois" existence, even as the sport demands the resources made possible by such an existence.

Mountains are both journey and destination. They summon us to climb their slopes, explore their canyons, and attempt their summits. The summit, despite months of preparation and toil, is never guaranteed though tastes of sweet nectar when reached. If my only goal as a teacher and mountaineer is the summit, I risk cruel failure if I do not reach the highest apex. Instead, if I accept the mountain’s invitation to journey and create meaning in each step, success is manifest in every moment.

Og er ikke klippen sin tilbedelse værd? Prøver den ikke hjerte og nyrer før den gir plas for de utvalgte?

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.

... one of the most decisive factors enduring a borderline situation is the WILL TO SURVIVE. -Reinhold Messner

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.

The best friends of the highest mountains are only the clouds and the adventurer mountaineers!

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.

The only way to fully know the soul of a mountain is to live it’s all seasons and it’s all heights and the same thing is valid for people as well!

The real flight of this hawk is impending. Still,this bird is yet to be tested for real. Though I have leaped over the seas, well,the entire sky is still remaining to fly. And make sure that ,i am gonna do it with all my heart and all my soul. #loveyoourlife #liveyourlife #hvFUN

There is no single, correct objective in mountaineering; there are only possibilities. One of them leads beyond the impossible. - Reinhold Messner

This is the human paradox of altitude: that it both exalts the individual mind and erases it. Those who travel to mountain tops are half in love with themselves, and half in love with oblivion.

too young to live, too old to die

Vi samles på Fortroppens hjørne mot vest og ser over mot tinden. Fra blokken vi står på har Pan eller Jordånden eller Djævelen selv spændt en usynlig kabel på to hundrede meter over i stortindens østvegg, der nyskurte tusenmetersva er brukket efter midten og hængt op til tørk.

What draws us from the low valleys to the high mountains is that noble stance of the summits!

Only secrets can be conquered'- most of all the secrets that lie within ourselves.

Profound silence would brood over the valley, even weighing down our spirits with indefinable heaviness. There can be no other place in the world where man feels himself so alone, so isolated, so completely ignored by nature, so incapable of entering into communion with her

Så kastet jeg mig over Turistforeningens Årbøker og slukte hvad jeg fandt om klatring. Horunger, nåler og Djævleskar! Store Gud!

Se i mig en 96 graders venn.

Som skodden skapes, ændres og forsvinder - slik skummer også livsformerne for fjeldets fot. Det er ikke menneskealdre Stetinden har skuet ned på fra sin ensomme høide, men jordaldre.

The altimeter had been damaged along the way, but the few bottles that we brought along to wash down the ordinary expedition rations were fine. True, a bottle gives only a vague indication of altitude, but can you drink an altimeter?

The mountain is calm when there is a storm; the mountain is calm when there is fog; the mountain is calm when there is sun! Calmness is the wisdom of the mountains! Those who have lived everything are always calm!

There was a shepherd the other day up at Findon Fair who had come from the east by Lewes with sheep, and who had in his eyes that reminiscence of horizons which makes the eyes of shepherds and of mountaineers different from the eyes of other men.

The unknown is so inflammatory to the imagination because it is an imaginatively malleable space: a projection-screen onto which a culture or an individual can throw their fears and their aspirations. Like Echo's cave, the unknown will answer back with whatever you shout at it.

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

What counts are merely the experiences one gains along the way. -Reinhold Messner

... where mountains are sacred & where risk & death are constant companions- the Himalayas.

Years ago, when I first started mountaineering, I was impetuous, heady, rash, impatient, prideful and arrogant. I in my mind, was both impervious and impregnable, "nothing could stop me," or so I thought. Then, I came face-to-face with Mount Everest for the first time, and she quickly humbled me. She forced me to do away with the false machismo, the fake toughness and the phony bravado, and in return, she blessed me with the gifts of comity, heightened inner-peace, calmness, and steadiness of both spirit and mind. Those blessings were gifts, gifts that rewrote my limbic system, and altered my pneuma. I now climb with laser clarity and aplomb. Less ardor, more piety born of apathetic ataraxia.

Working on the summit of Mauna Kea was comparable to working on the hospital pulmonary ward with sick people sucking on oxygen cylinders.