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.
It's more of an adventure when you set off into unknown territory, and there's nothing like that feeling you get when you discover a place on the Earth where no one has ever been.
There are people who travel because they want to push themselves to physical limits, people who walk across deserts or cycle across the Antarctic - like Ranulph Fiennes, who just does it because it's there. And then there are people like me, who are just genuinely curious about the world.
The future of Yosemite climbing lies not in Yosemite, but in using the new techniques in the great granite ranges of the world.
True adventure begins when everything goes wrong.
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.
Everest has always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics and others with a shaky hold on reality.
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