The best climbers no longer go to the 8000ers, but to the most difficult mountains in the world which are 6000 or 7000-meter-peaks. There they find any kind of playground. But it is a pity that the really good climbers have fewer opportunities to finance their expeditions because so much attention is taken away by the Everest tourists.
Interpretation
True skill is often found in tackling challenges that are less recognized but more difficult.
Reinhold Messner's quote emphasizes that the most accomplished climbers focus on the challenging peaks of lower altitudes rather than the popular and commercialized heights like Everest. It highlights the idea that real ability and passion may go unnoticed in a culture that glorifies the more accessible, yet less demanding, achievements in climbing, suggesting that true adventure lies in the pursuit of difficult and lesser-known challenges.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a motivational speech at an adventure sports event.
I became famous for the fact that I would break many, many limits. People said, 'He does all these crazy things.' But oddly it was a crazy thing only because scientists and climbers said, 'Everest and the 8,000-meter peaks without oxygen - impossible. Messner is becoming sick in his head.'
A 30-year-old rock climber is an old man. At 40, one is in the middle of his high-altitude power. At 50, a crosser of deserts is at his best age. But at 60, each of us is out of the game.
I think my cultural work is more important than the adventures I did. The adventures are not important for human beings. It's the conquering of the useless.
In mountaineering, there is not only the activity, but the philosophy behind it. Some say a moral, but I am against that because all morality is dangerous.
I was the first man to climb the world's 14 tallest peaks without supplementary oxygen, but I never asked how high I would go, just how I would do it.
In my state of spiritual abstraction, I no longer belong to myself and to my eyesight. I am nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung, floating over the mists and summits.
You have to remember this was the '60s, when climbing was dangerous and sex was safe.
Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry.
I have lifted my plane . . . for perhaps a thousand flights and I have never felt her wheels glide from the Earth into the air without knowing the uncertainty and the exhilaration of first-born adventure.
I have ever been prone to seek adventure and to investigate and experiment where wiser men would have left well enough alone.
Part of the reasons I have lived the life I have is because I wanted to have an adventurous life. But my best adventures are more literary than political.
The Nautilus was piercing the water with its sharp spur, after having accomplished nearly ten thousand leagues in three months and a half, a distance greater than the great circle of the earth. Where were we going now, and what was reserved for the future?
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