Quotes on Mountaineering

The fleeting hour of life of those who love the hills is quickly spent, but the hills are eternal. Always there will be the lonely ridge, the dancing beck, the silent forest; always there will be the exhilaration of the summits. These are for the seeking, and those who seek and find while there is still time will be blessed both in mind and body.

Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the mystery why we climb.

I don’t deny that there can be an element of escapism in mountaineering, but this should never overshadow its real essence, which is not escape but victory over your own human frailty.

For us the mountains had been a natural field of activity where, playing on the frontiers of life and death, we had found the freedom for which we were blindly groping and which was as necessary to us as bread.

Mountains are not fair or unfair, they are just dangerous.

No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied - it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.

After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.

There's no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing

There's no such thing as bad weather - only the wrong clothes.

The roller-coaster is my life; life is a fast, dizzying game; life is a parachute jump; it’s taking chances, falling over and getting up again; it’s mountaineering; it’s wanting to get to the very top of yourself and feeling angry and dissatisfied when you don’t manage it

I climb upon the highest mountains, laughing at all tragedies - whether real or imaginary.

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.

Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out - it's the grain of sand in your shoe.

It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.

The Sherpas play a very important role in most mountaineering expeditions, and in fact many of them lead along the ridges and up to the summit.