Climbers

"My solar plexus was tight with fear as I ploughed on. Halfway up I stopped, exhausted. I could look down 10,000 feet between my legs, and I have never felt more insecure. Anxiously I waved Tenzing up to me."

"Well, we knocked the bastard off!"

"I am hell-bent for the South Pole — God willing and crevasses permitting."

"Better if he had said something natural like, "Jesus, here we are.""

"I’ve always hated the danger part of climbing, and it’s great to come down again because it’s safe … But there is something about building up a comradeship — that I still believe is the greatest of all feats — and sharing in the dangers with your company of peers. It’s the intense effort, the giving of everything you’ve got. It’s really a very pleasant sensation."

"It was too late to take risks now. I asked Tenzing to belay me strongly, and I started cutting a cautious line of steps up the ridge. Peering from side to side and thrusting with my ice axe, I tried to discover a possible cornice, but everything seemed solid and firm. I waved Tenzing up to me. A few more whacks of the ice–ax, a few very weary steps, and we were on the summit of Everest. It was 11:30 AM. My first sensation was one of relief — relief that the long grind was over, that the summit had been reached before our oxygen supplies had dropped to a critical level; and relief that in the end the mountain had been kind to us in having a pleasantly rounded cone for its summit instead of a fearsome and unapproachable cornice. But mixed with the relief was a vague sense of astonishment that I should have been the lucky one to attain the ambition of so many brave and determined climbers. I seemed difficult to grasp that we'd got there. I was too tired and too conscious of the long way down to safety really to feel any great elation. But as the fact of our success thrust itself more clearly into my mind, I felt a quiet glow of satisfaction spread through my body — a satisfaction less vociferous but more powerful than I had ever felt on a mountain top before. I turned and looked at Tenzing. Even beneath his oxygen mask and the icicles hanging form his hair, I could see his infectious grin of sheer delight. I held out my hand, and in silence we shook in good Anglo-Saxon fashion. But this was not enough for Tenzing, and impulsively he threw his arm around my shoulders and we thumped each other on the back in mutual congratulations."

"Tenzing had been waiting patiently, but now, at my request, he unfurled the flags wrapped around his ice–axe and standing at the summit, held them above his head. Clad in all his bulky equipment and with the flags flapping furiously in the wind, he made a dramatic picture, and the thought drifted through my mind that this photograph should be a good one if it came out at all. I didn't worry about getting Tenzing to take a photograph of me — as far as I knew, he had never taken a photograph before, and the summit of Everest was hardly the place to show him how."

"Reaching the summit of a mountain gives great satisfaction, but nothing for me has been more rewarding in life than the result of our climb on Everest, when we have devoted ourselves to the welfare of our Sherpa friends."

"While standing on top of Everest, I looked across the valley, towards the other great peak, Makalu, and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed… it showed me that, even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn’t the end of everything for me, by any means. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges."

"Having just paid our respects to the highest mountain in the world, I then had no choice but to urinate on it."

"You don't have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things — to compete. You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals. The intense effort, the giving of everything you've got, is a very pleasant bonus."

"Nobody climbs mountains for scientific reasons. Science is used to raise money for the expeditions, but you really climb for the hell of it."

"I think the whole attitude towards climbing Mount Everest has become rather horrifying. The people just want to get to the top. They don't give a damn for anybody else who may be in distress and it doesn't impress me at all that they leave someone lying under a rock to die."

"On my expedition there was no way that you would have left a man under a rock to die. It simply would not have happened. It would have been a disaster from our point of view. There have been a number of occasions when people have been neglected and left to die and I don’t regard this as a correct philosophy. I am absolutely certain that if any member of our expedition all those years ago had been in that situation we would have made every effort."

"I am a lucky man. I have had a dream and it has come true, and that is not a thing that happens often to men."

"I became a Hindu. I was very close to the Hindu ethic. It was a great spiritual experience. ... I believe a man can make his own destiny through his work and effort."

"Some day I’m going to climb Everest."

"In some ways I believe I epitomise the average New Zealander: I have modest abilities, I combine these with a good deal of determination, and I rather like to succeed."

"We didn’t know if it was humanly possible to reach the top of Mt. Everest. And even using oxygen as we were, if we did get to the top, we weren’t at all sure whether we wouldn’t drop dead or something of that nature."

"I was very much aware that we still had to get safely back down the mountain again and that was quite an important factor. I really felt the most excitement when we finally got to the bottom of the mountain again and it was all behind us."

"I was just an enthusiastic mountaineer of modest abilities who was willing to work quite hard and had the necessary imagination and determination. I was just an average bloke; it was the media that transformed me into a heroic figure. And try as I did, there was no way to destroy my heroic image. But as I learned through the years, as long as you didn’t believe all that rubbish about yourself, you wouldn’t come to much harm."

"The explorers of the past were great men and we should honour them. But let us not forget that their spirit lives on. It is still not hard to find a man who will adventure for the sake of a dream or one who will search, for the pleasure of searching, not for what he may find."

"I don't know if I particularly want to be remembered for anything. I have enjoyed great satisfaction from my climb of Everest and my trips to the poles. But there's no doubt, either, that my most worthwhile things have been the building of schools and medical clinics. That has given me more satisfaction than a footprint on a mountain."

"People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things."

"It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves."

"Hillary has climbed to the top of the world. He has put the British race and New Zealand on top of the world."

"The beekeeper and the Sherpa, one from a remote former colony of the Crown on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, the other from the edge of the heavens. They affirmed the power of humble determination and, placing themselves firmly with the mythic paradigms of their respective cultures, won one for the underdogs. … On this lonely planet of freeze dried food, computer generated fabrics and commercialised mountain climbing, it is almost impossible to imagine the earth-shaking impact that Hillary and Norgay’s achievement had in 1953. For many it represented the last of the earth’s great challenges. It placed Hillary in the lineage of great terrestrial explorers. … His achievement as one of mankind’s great accomplishments came at one of the last times in history when such a feat could still be recognised as a distinctly human one, and not technological. … Hillary’s near-mythical status puts him on a plateau above sporting heroes, for he has distinguished himself well beyond the singularity of a mountain. From a feat that would have been the crowning achievement of many careers, he has gone on to become a humanitarian, an ambassador and elder statesman, never giving up, never giving in to either despair or complacency, always planning the next goal."

"The Sherpa gasped out as they mounted the slope, "Our troubles are only commencing!" Said Sir Edmund, "You're tired and nervous, relax - You'll nEverest if you're Tensing.""

"Geography was not furthered by the achievement, scientific progress was scarcely hastened, and nothing new was discovered. Yet the names of Hillary and Tenzing went instantly into all languages as the names of heroes, partly because they really were men of heroic mold but chiefly because they represented so compellingly the spirit of their time."

"The real point of mountain climbing, as of most hard sports, is that it voluntarily tests the human spirit against the fiercest odds, not that it achieves anything more substantial — or even wins the contest, for that matter. For the most part, its heroism is of a subjective kind. It was the fate of Hillary and Tenzing, though, to become very public heroes indeed, and it was a measure of the men that over the years they truly grew into the condition. Perhaps they thought that just being the first to climb a hill was hardly qualification for immortality; perhaps they instinctively realized destiny had another place for them. For they both became, in the course of time, representatives not merely of their particular nations but of half of humanity. Astronauts might justly claim that they were envoys of all humanity; Hillary and Tenzing, in a less spectacular kind, came to stand for the small nations of the world, the young ones, the tucked-away and the up-and-coming."

"I liked these men very much when I first met them on the mountain nearly a half-century ago, but I came to admire them far more in the years that followed. I thought their brand of heroism — the heroism of example, the heroism of debts repaid and causes sustained — far more inspiring than the gung-ho kind. Did it really mean much to the human race when Everest was conquered for the first time? Only because there became attached to the memory of the exploit, in the years that followed, a reputation for decency, kindness and stylish simplicity. Hillary and Tenzing fixed it when they knocked the bastard off."

"He is lucky who, in the full tide of life, has experienced a measure of the active environment he most desires. In these days of upheaval and violent change, when the basic values of to-day are the vain and shattered dreams of to-morrow, there is much to be said for a philosophy which aims at living a full life while the opportunity offers. There are few treasures of more lasting worth than the experience of a way of life that is in itself wholly satisfying. Such, after all, are the only possessions of which no fate, no cosmic catastrophe can deprive us; nothing can alter the fact if for one moment in eternity we have really lived."

"Only an easy scramble remained and we were there, on the hitherto untrodden summit of Nelion."

"...and I longed to return to the peak to explore some of the many ridges and faces which as yet had never been attempted. I now realise how lucky I was to have had this extraordinary peak virtually to myself;..."

"Few mountains have such a superb array of ridges and faces."

"After that I was infused with a pleasant sense of abandon. Our rope was not long enough for us to abseil down the red step, and the idea of climbing down it without support from above was not to be contemplated; therefore we just had to reach the summit."

"(To Eric Shipton) who had contributed a great deal to the achievement."

"Because it's there."

"One comes to bless the absolute bareness, feeling that here is a pure beauty of form, a kind of ultimate harmony."

"I look back on tremendous efforts & exhaustion & dismal looking out of a tent door on to a dismal world of snow and vanishing hopes - & yet, & yet, & yet there have been a good many things to set the other side."

"Gradually, very gradually, we saw the great mountain sides and glaciers and aretes, now one fragment and now another through the floating rifts, until far higher in the sky than imagination had dared to suggest the white summit of Everest appeared."

"Why do we travel to remote locations? To prove our adventurous spirit or to tell stories about incredible things? We do it to be alone amongst friends and to find ourselves in a land without man."

"But when I said that nothing had been done I erred in one important matter. We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money — booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:"

"Knowledge once gained casts a faint light beyond its own immediate boundaries."

"The experimental researches of Faraday are so voluminous, their descriptions are so detailed, and their wealth of illustration is so great, as to render it a heavy labour to master them. The multiplication of proofs, necessary and interesting when the new truths had to be established, are however less needful now when these truths have become household words in science."

"A point highly illustrative of the character of Faraday now comes into view. He gave an account of his discovery of Magneto-electricity in a letter to his friend M. Hachette, of Paris, who communicated the letter to the Academy of Sciences. The letter was translated and published ; and immediately afterwards two distinguished Italian philosophers took up the subject, made numerous experiments, and published their results before the complete memoirs of Faraday had met the public eye. This evidently irritated him. He reprinted the paper of the learned Italians in the Philosophical Magazine accompanied by sharp critical notes from himself. He also wrote a letter dated Dec. 1,1832, to Gay Lussac, who was then one of the editors of the Annales de Chimie in which he analysed the results of the Italian philosophers, pointing out their errors, and' defending himself from what he regarded as imputations on his character. The style of this letter is unexceptionable, for Faraday could not write otherwise than as a gentleman; but the letter shows that had he willed it he could have hit hard. We have heard much of Faraday's gentleness and sweetness and tenderness. It is all true, but it is very incomplete. You cannot resolve a powerful nature into these elements, and Faraday's character would have been less admirable than it was had it not embraced forces and tendencies to which the silky adjectives "gentle" and "tender" would by no means apply. Underneath his sweetness and gentleness was the heat of a volcano. He was a man of excitable and fiery nature; but through high self-discipline he had converted the fire into a central glow and motive power of life, instead of permitting it to waste itself in useless passion. "He that is slow to anger" saith the sage, "is greater than the mighty, and he that ruleth his own spirit than he that taketh a city." Faraday was not slow to anger, but he completely ruled his own spirit, and thus, though he took no cities, he captivated all hearts."

"Life is a wave, which in no two consecutive moments of its existence is composed of the same particles."

"The mind of man may be compared to a musical instrument with a certain range of notes, beyond which in both directions we have an infinitude of silence."

"The brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until they have been proved to have their counterparts in the world of fact."

"It is as fatal as it is cowardly to blink facts because they are not to our taste."

"Charles Darwin, the Abraham of scientific men — a searcher as obedient to the command of truth as was the patriarch to the command of God."

"Superstition may be defined as constructive religion which has grown incongruous with intelligence."

"Religious feeling is as much a verity as any other part of human consciousness; and against it, on the subjective side, the waves of science beat in vain."

"[T]he Christian philosopher of to-day has larger capacities and fuller knowledge than the Israelite of the time of Moses. What the one accepted as literal truth the other cannot accept save as a myth or figure. The children of Israel received without idealisation the statements of their great lawgiver. To them the tables of the law were true tablets of stone, prepared, engraved, broken, and re-engraved; while the graving tool which thus inscribed the law was held undoubtingly to be the finger of God. To us such conceptions are impossible. We may by habit use the words, but we attach to them no definite meaning."

"To Principal Caird... imaging of the Unseen is of inestimable value. It furnishes an objective counterpart to religious emotion, permanent but plastic—capable of indefinite change and purification in response to the changing thoughts and aspirations of mankind."

"The Apocrypha... ought to be bound up with all your Bibles; it contains much that is beautiful and wise, and there is in history nothing finer than the description of Eleazar's end."

"Almost every faith can point to its rejoicing martyrs."

"The strength of faith is... no proof of the objective truth of faith."

"I leave it to you to compare this Christian hero Paul] with some of the 'freethinkers' of our own day, who, 'more intolerant than the intolerance they deprecate,' flaunt in public their cheap and trumpery theories of the great Apostle and the Master whom he served."

"Christian love was not the feeling which long animated the respective followers of Peter and Paul. We who have been born into a settled state of things can hardly realise the commotion out of which this tranquillity has emerged. We have, for example, the canon of Scripture already arranged for us. But to sift and select these writings from the mass of spurious documents afloat at the time of compilation was a work of vast labour, difficulty, and responsibility. The age was rife with forgeries. Even good men lent themselves to these pious frauds, believing that true Christian doctrine, which of course was their doctrine, would be thereby quickened and promoted. There were gospels and counter-gospels; epistles and counter-epistles—some frivolous, some dull, some speculative and romantic, and some so rich and penetrating, so saturated with the Master's spirit, that, though not included in the canon, they enjoyed an authority almost equal to that of the canonical books."

"When arguments or proofs were needed, whether on the side of the Jewish Christians or of the Gentile Christians, a document was discovered which met the case, and on which the name of an apostle, or of some authoritative contemporary of the apostles, was boldly inscribed. The end being held to sanctify the means, there was no lack of manufactured testimony."

"The Christian world seethed not only with apocryphal writings, but with hostile interpretations of writings not apocryphal."

"Then arose the sect of the Gnostics—men who know — who laid claim to the possession of a perfect science, and who, if they were to be believed, had discovered the true formula for what philosophers called 'the Absolute.' But these speculative Gnostics were rejected by the conservative and orthodox Christians of their day as fiercely as their successors the Agnostics —men who don't know—are rejected by the orthodox in our own."

"With terrible jolts and oscillations the religious life of the world has run down 'the ringing grooves of change.' A smoother route may have been undiscoverable. At all events it was undiscovered."

"Some years ago I found myself in discussion with a friend who entertained the notion that the general tendency of things in this world is towards equilibrium, the result of which would be peace and blessedness to the human race. My notion, was that equilibrium meant... death. No motive power is to be got from heat, save during its fall from a higher to a lower temperature, as no power is to be got from water save during its descent from a higher to a lower level. Thus also life consists, not in equilibrium, but in the passage towards equilibrium. In man it is the leap from the potential through the actual to repose."

"[K]nowledge and progress are the fruits of action."

"[T]he enunciation of a thought in advance of the moment provokes dissent or evokes approval, and thus promotes action. The thought may be unwise; but it is only by discussion, checked by experience, that its value can be determined."

"Discussion, therefore, is one of the motive powers of life, and, as such, is not to be deprecated."

"The yoke of religion has not always been easy, nor its burden light—a result arising, in part from the ignorance of the world at large, but more especially from the mistakes of those who had the charge and guidance of a great spiritual force, and who guided it blindly."

"[W]aste in intellect may be as much an incident of growth as waste in nature."

"Christ found the religions of the world oppressed almost to suffocation by the load of formulas piled upon them by the priesthood. He removed the load, and rendered respiration free. He cared little for forms and ceremonies, which had ceased to be the raiment of man's spiritual life. To that life he looked, and it he sought to restore."

"Science, which is the logic of nature, demands proportion between the house and its foundation. Theology sometimes builds weighty structures on a doubtful base."

"That there were 'weeds' in the Bible requiring to be kept out of sight was to me... a new revelation. I take little pleasure in dwelling upon the errors and blemishes of a book rendered venerable to me by intrinsic wisdom and imperishable associations. But...when its passages are invoked to justify the imposition of a yoke, irksome because unnatural, we are driven in self-defence to be critical."

"Religion lives not by the force and aid of dogma, but because it is ingrained in the nature of man. ...the moulds have been broken and reconstructed over and over again, but the molten ore abides in the ladle of humanity."

"[O]f the future form of religion little can be predicted. Its main concern may possibly be to purify, elevate, and brighten the life that now is, instead of treating it as the more or less dismal vestibule of a life that is to come."

"The Sabbath being regarded as a shadow or type of that heavenly repose which the righteous will enjoy when this world has passed away, 'so these six days of creation are so many periods or millenniums for which the world and the toils and labours of our present state are destined to endure.' The Mosaic account was thus reduced to a poetic myth... But if this symbolic interpretation, which is now generally accepted, be the true one, what becomes of the Sabbath day? It is absolutely without ecclesiastical meaning. The man who was executed for gathering sticks on that day must therefore be regarded as the victim of a rude legal rendering of a religious epic."

"We ought not to judge superior men without reference to the spirit of their age. This is an influence from which they cannot escape, and so far as it extenuates their errors it ought to be pleaded in their favour."

"[T]he most fatal error that could be committed by the leaders of religious thought is the attempt to force into their own age conceptions which have lived their life, and come to their natural end in preceding ages."

"History is the record of a vast experimental investigation—of a search by man after the best conditions of existence."

"To legislation... the Puritans resorted. Instead of guiding, they repressed, and thus pitted themselves against the unconquerable impulses of human nature. Believing that nature to be depraved, they felt themselves logically warranted in putting it in irons. But they failed; and their failure ought to be a warning to their successors."

"When the Pope can go to the extreme of fulminating anathemas against all who maintain the liberty of the press and of speech, or who insist that in the conflict of laws, civil and ecclesiastical, the civil law should prevail, or that any method of instruction solely secular, may be approved; (Encyclical of 1864) and Mr. Tyndall, as the mouthpiece of nineteenth century science, says, ". . . the impregnable position of science may be stated in a few words: we claim, and we shall wrest from theology, the entire domain of cosmological theory" ("Fragments of Science")—the end is not difficult to foresee."

"In his Fragments of Science Tyndall makes the following sad confession: "If you ask me whether science has solved, or is likely in our day to solve the problem of this universe, I must shake my head in doubt." If moved by an afterthought, he corrects himself later, and assures his audience that experimental evidence has helped him to discover, in the opprobrium-covered matter, the "promise and potency of every quality of life," he only jokes. It would be as difficult for Professor Tyndall to offer any ultimate and irrefutable proofs of what he asserts, as it was for Job to insert a hook into the nose of the leviathan."

"It has lately been the fashion to speak of "the untenable conceptions of an uncultivated past." As though it were possible to hide behind an epigram the intellectual quarries out of which the reputations of so many modern philosophers have been carved! Just as Tyndall is ever ready to disparage ancient philosophers — for a dressing-up of whose ideas more than one distinguished scientist has derived honor and credit — so the geologists seem more and more inclined to take for granted that all of the archaic races were contemporaneously in a state of dense barbarism."

"The soul, which is immortal, has an arithmetical, as the body has a geometrical, beginning. This beginning, as the reflection of the great universal ARCHÆUS, is self moving, and from the centre diffuses itself over the whole body of the microcosm. It was the sad perception of this truth that made Tyndall confess how powerless is science, even over the world of matter. "The first marshalling of the atoms, on which all subsequent action depends, baffles a keener power than that of the microscope." "Through pure excess of complexity, and long before observation can have any voice in the matter, the most highly trained intellect, the most refined and disciplined imagination, retires in bewilderment from the contemplation of the problem. We are struck dumb by an astonishment which no microscope can relieve, doubting not only the power of our instrument, but even whether we ourselves possess the intellectual elements which will ever enable us to grapple with the ultimate structural energies of nature.""

"There may be more truth in the adventurous pangenesis of Darwin — whom Tyndall calls a "soaring speculator" — than in the cautious, line-bound hypothesis of the latter; who, in common with other thinkers of his class, surrounds his imagination "by the firm frontiers of reason." The theory of a microscopic germ which contains in itself "a world of minor germs," soars in one sense at least into the infinite. It oversteps the world of matter, and begins unconsciously busying itself in the world of spirit."

"The sun, according to Tyndall, wasted into space practically all its energy except an imperceptible portion that happened to fall on the earth; but even this portion was not utilizable ... without assistance."

"Early on a difficult climb, especially a difficult solo climb, you constantly feel the abyss pulling at your back. To resist takes a tremendous conscious effort; you don't dare let your guard down for an instant. The siren song of the void puts you on edge; it makes your movements tentative, clumsy, herky-jerky. But as the climb goes on, you grow accustomed to the exposure, you get used to rubbing shoulders with doom, you come to believe in the reliability of your hands and feet and head. You learn to trust your self-control. By and by your attention becomes so intensely focused that you no longer notice the raw knuckles, the cramping thighs, the strain of maintaining nonstop concentration. A trancelike state settles over your efforts; the climb becomes a clear-eyed dream. Hours slide by like minutes. The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence — the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes — all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose and by the seriousness of the task at hand. At such moments something resembling happiness actually stirs in your chest, but it isn't the sort of emotion you want to lean on very hard. In solo climbing the whole enterprise is held together with little more than chutzpah, not the most reliable adhesive."

"Straddling the top of the world, one foot in China and the other in Nepal, I cleared the ice from my oxygen mask, hunched a shoulder against the wind, and stared absently down at the vastness of Tibet. I understood on some dim, detached level that the sweep of earth beneath my feet was a spectacular sight. I'd been fantasizing about this moment, and the release of emotion that would accompany it, for many months. But now that I was finally here, actually standing on the summit of Mount Everest, I just couldn't summon the energy to care."

"I don't know what God is, or what God had in mind when the universe was set in motion. In fact, I don't know if God even exists, although I confess that I sometimes find myself praying in times of great fear, or despair, or astonishment at a display of unexpected beauty. There are some ten thousand religious sects — each with its own cosmology, each with its own answer for the meaning of life and death. Most assert that the other 9,999 not only have it completely wrong but are instruments of evil, besides. None of the ten thousand has yet persuaded me to make the requisite leap of faith. In the absence of conviction, I've come to terms with the fact that uncertainty is an inescapable corollary of life. An abundance of mystery is simply part of the bargain — which doesn't strike me as something to lament. Accepting the essential inscrutability of existence, in any case, is surely preferable to its opposite: capitulating to the tyranny of intransigent belief. And if I remain in the dark about our purpose here, and the meaning of eternity, I have nevertheless arrived at an understanding of a few modest truths: Most of us fear death. Most of us yearn to comprehend how we got here, and why — which is to say, most of us ache to know the love of our creator. And we will no doubt feel that ache, most of us, for as long as we happen to be alive."

"I started eating vegan purely for health/athletic reasons originally. But as the years have gone by, I care very much about trying to cause as little harm to other creatures as possible. I really love animals and respect them very much, and I don’t want to see them hurt or forced into unnatural lives. I’m not so much out to change the world, as to change myself, but I would love to see all the people taking care of all living creatures, humans included. Wouldn’t that be something? With being vegan and avoiding animal products of any kind, my policy has always been to just do the best I can. No one’s perfect, but we can’t let that stop us from trying to be better, right?"

"It's funny how many times in life I've found myself rolling full steam ahead toward something I was sure I'd never do. Whatever might happen in life, whether I liked it or didn't like it, I could know one thing for sure: it would change. There was absolute certainty in uncertainty, in some ways an enormous comfort."

"I’ve been vegan for 10 years now, and there’s nothing in my life that hasn’t become better as a result. … To perform my sports and to stay alive in high risk environments, I need to be at top level athletic fitness. I also need to be highly attuned to the natural environment, and able to listen to myself and any outside messages. I have found that eating a vegan diet gives me optimum physical and mental awareness. … A vegan diet keeps consumer dollars out of the marketplace that supports factory farming, which I believe to be evil."

"I like all styles of climbing for different things. I like the focus and the solitude of solo climbing. … The best jumper is the one who never gets hurt. Find that person and try to be like him/her. … Adventure is when you aren't sure what's going to happen."

"As with the other difficult moments in my life, those experiences reinforced the fact that I climb for myself and no one else. Sometimes the distinctions get blurred, and it's easy to get sucked into other people's realities. In the end, climbing is what I love, my own expression of joy. Everything else is just noise."

"I wonder sometimes why climbers embrace climbing so ecstatically, with a passion that feels spiritual, even religious. For years, I never questioned this deep love. I simply realized that I had been looking for something for a long time and had somehow miraculously found it before I even knew it was missing. Now, when I consider the mainstream Western culture that produced me, I see there is something seriously missing for a lot of people. An altered experience of reality is fundamental to a spiritual worldview. Perhaps that is what climbers glimpse—sometimes in the mountains, sometimes when reaching deep within to push past physical limits. Many of us have never felt it before, and we will give anything to get closer to it in the only way we know how."

"I often hear people call climbing a selfish, egocentric pursuit. I consider this idea a lot. On the surface, as a sport or activity, this may be true. But for most soul climbers, climbing has never been merely about athletics. Climbing has shown me how to look beyond myself and my own desires. It has taught me how to be a part of a community, rather than living in a narrow world of my own making. I have learned, painfully, how to accept help from others. I have learned that my powerful emotions can be my greatest strength, as well as my greatest weakness. Physically and intellectually, climbing has tugged me into the larger world, beyond my own culture and comfort zone. Above all, climbing has shown me the existence of forces beyond the seen world. It has taught me to ponder the meaning of reality. It has shown me that I am small."

"In the last few months, surrounding myself with true friends and their positive energy, I am unfolding, emerging renewed. Climbing, I touch rock and feel the rush of infatuation. In a way, it feels like being reborn. I will always push hard. At times, I will be caught by inspiration, and when that happens I will never give up. That's who I am. But what I know now is that climbing is more than that. I'm more than that. So much has happened, but in some ways nothing has changed. Climbing, simply and joyfully, is the way I love the world."

"Above and beyond were mountains, scarcely touched by the tidemark of humanity at their bases, impervious to pipers and ice cream barrows or to the customers of either, as aloof and untouched as the desert which hems in the airport of Timbuctoo."

"The tent door faced the summit. The three pinnacles were gigantic fingers, black against the sunset. Nothing stirred. Arrochar and all its works were out of sight below the skyline, and there was silence."

"A precipice, seen by a person who has never had to climb one, is a sadly misunderstood part of the landscape. It is written off, in the mind of the beholder, as so much light and shade set at an angle of ninety degrees to the part of the world where reasonable men may walk, a given area of rock, steep as a wall and impossibly smooth. It is seen as a whole, because no sub division seems possible."

"The scale is so vast and so far beyond his comprehension that the conventional signs of the cliff mean as little as those on the map. Therefore, if he should think of rock climbing at all, it is as a foolhardy sport clear against the laws of God, man, and Sir Isaac Newton."

"The impact of these things and people on our minds was considerable. In the three years since we had left school, many things had happened to make us suspect that the world was a slightly less ordered and restricted place than we had been led to believe. But this was immense."

"In time (though there was no such thing as time) the handhold gave way to another handhold, and another, and another. A pair of boots appeared level with my face. I pulled myself over the edge and sat panting. Murdo smiled at me, and automatically I smiled back. I turned, and looked over the edge. And then, and only then, did the gears re-engage and the world become the world again."

"The strange, other worldly, Alice in Wonderland feeling never quite left me at the difficult places; but it diminished as the day passed, and by the time we had reached the north peak John and I were able to sit with our legs dangling over the drop and agree with Tizzie that one met such nice people on mountains."

"The ground we had covered was easy; but we did not know that, for we had not yet learned that a vast amount of space below one is not of itself a difficulty, and that the difficulty in rock climbing varies according to the presence or absence of holds. To us, the drop was everything."

"They crawled like flies over the face of the Cobbler; and it was not too fanciful to imagine that the mountain might sigh in its sleep, shake a rocky paw free of the heather blanket which surrounded it, and brush the insects off. To us, who had imagined mountain tops to be uninhabited deserts, it was surprising that there should be so much life in this twisted landscape of rock. Here was a society whose existence we had never suspected."

"Climbing to my mind finds its chief justification as an antidote for modern city life. One cannot sweat and worry simultaneously. The mountain resolves itself into a series of simple problems, unconfused by other issues. Its problems are solid rock, to be wrestled with physically; and in the sheer exuberance of thinking through his fingers and toes as his primaeval fathers did before him the climber's worries vanish, sweated from his system, leaving his brain free to appreciate beauty."

"I saw him in the studio treating the microphone like an old friend, chatting away, waving his arms about, and I knew this was how it was done."

"Не я предала советскую власть, а она меня. И не только меня одну – весь горский народ. Она отняла нашу свободу, землю, радость, наши горы и даже наш вкус- ный воздух. Я беспредельно чтила Ленина, верила Сталину. Была патриоткой до мозга костей. Помню, как меня вдохновляли песни про Ленина, про Сталина, с каким воодушевлением я пела: Широка страна моя родная, Много в ней лесов, полей и рек. Я другой такой страны не знаю, Где так вольно дышит человек! Пела до тех пор, пока «страна моя родная» не накинула мне петлю на шею. Вот когда дыхание перехватило... Все разом изменилось 23 февраля 44-го. Когда мне цинично заявили: «Раз ты патриотка, помоги нам лишить тебя родины, родителей и даже жизни», пришлось, наконец, понять, что есть советская власть."

"It has frequently been noticed that all mountains appear doomed to pass through the three stages: An inaccessible peak—The most difficult ascent in the Alps—An easy day for a lady."

"You need to have your ability to explore your human potential, which needs a lot of discipline, focus, positivity and removing all the negativity that is around you"

"As a climber, it's not about the summit, it's about the process"

"Summiting Everest (And Africa’s Cancer Crisis) | Forbes Under 30 Africa (May 2022)"

"Forbes - at the #ForbesUnder30 Summit in Botswana, Ouma Sekokole (April 2022)"

"Mt. Everest is now the wealthy executive’s midlife crises."

"That thing you did 10 years ago that was significant everyone is doing it now. The thing you did a year ago, you’ve been copied"

"It is about what is happening within the group of people you have chosen to go with. The teams who failed, very few of them where actually stopped by the mountain. Even the ones caught in the storm they made complacent mistakes that made them vulnerable when things went wrong and then the teams that succeed it’s about the set of intangible tools a real clarity of purpose for your team"

"Was I proud to be a pioneer? Apart from my being the first woman guide I wasn’t that different from my peers. Women mountaineers went way back and then there was the generation immediately before me: role models who formed an all-women club three years before I was born."

"The best things about climbing? Unlimited space. I know where I am in mountains. The stillness: not silence because there is always some sound even if it’s no more than a breeze over rock, but there is no noise. Solitude is fine but, even better, just one companion: the other person on the rope with whom there is a bond that transcends any other relationship: trust, faith, an intimacy that is asexual but essential because in the last resort you are each responsible for the other’s life."

"But the basic pleasure in the hills is the natural environment which can be as fulfilling in later life as rock climbing was in one’s heyday. Equally dangerous when old (and particularly solo) and thus most satisfying to the spirit because the delight in challenges and the pleasure in calculating risks never dies."

"Writing, becoming a successful writer, was a different matter but not unique in the trade. We don’t choose a course in life; our genes dictate the route. I wasn’t born to be a climber and a writer, rather I was inclined to both genetically and the influences arrived: a supportive parent, a perceptive English teacher, favourite authors."

"I’ve always been an active child – I was the one on school trips clambering up rocks and getting stuck while others complained about blisters and heavy bags – but more adventurous climbing was never on my radar"

"In September 2009 I climbed Mount Manaslu, the world’s eighth-highest mountain. It was, without a doubt, my toughest climb to date. I was so far out of my comfort zone. There were moments when I thought I just couldn’t do it. Each day was the hardest day of my life. I’ll always look back at that trip and remember the pain, the fear."

"To be honest, I don’t have the best memories of the summit. When I think of my successes on Everest, I don’t think of getting to the summit, I think of other scary moments, working together as a team. By that point, I’d had all the experience I needed. The summit has been hyped up by the media – there’s so much more to Everest than reaching the peak."

"One of the key things is to understand there are no limits to your knowledge (and) understanding what you can do."

"Very difficult thing to do. If you look at performance record of managers, being human hurts you and 80% of managers under-perform benchmark over short- and long-term period, it's tough game."

"I think you need to be able to focus on the secular, i.e. focus on big trends because there is so much noise that various issues bring that clearly influence the price movement in the near-term but ultimately doesn't shift the needle."

"But it's difficult, we are humans, that's why maybe machines at some point will be better at optimizing the information flow, optimizing for judgment and crowding of the market and may come up with better portfolios."

"It's having this trust in people around you; when you're thrown an opportunity - embracing it, though it may be really scary, because at the end of the day, you can do it - you have a toolbox being a professional. It's all about just breathing deeply and having allies, so having a team, you can never do stuff like that on your own"

"It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves."

"Mentally commit 100%. Redpointing requires a different approach to onsighting and you need to change your mindset. I am not a natural redpointer as I want things to happen quickly: I’m not particularly patient. But I’ve learnt that the routes do come if you persist and train appropriately. Once you can do all the moves on a project, it’s a case of trying to link them together in longer overlapping sections. It’s surprising how quickly this stage can come together."

"On one hand you know you can hang around and recover to work things out, but hanging around too long and half-trying a move over and over again depletes your power levels."

"Climbing is such a natural thing as human beings. It’s part of how we used to survive"

"They’re climbing within their comfort zone, and mitigating these risks, and choosing to do something that keeps them fit, active, healthy and happy."

"There is so much more freedom and enjoyment in a very different way. When you make your passion your job, it’s difficult to stay in love with that. This stage has brought it all back, fulfilled me again"

"For the first time in my life I was able to think. I do not mean to think objectively or analytically, but rather to surrender thought to my surroundings. This is a power of which we know little in the West but which is a basic of abstract thought in the East. It is allowing the mind to receive rather than to seek impressions, and it is gained by expurgating extraneous thought. It is then that the Eternal speaks; that the mutations of the universe are apparent; the very atmosphere is filled with life and song; the hills are resolved from mere masses of snow, ice and rock into something living. When this happens the human mind escapes from the bondage of its own feeble imaginings and becomes as one with its Creator.""

"I climb for pleasure, for the wonderful views and the vigorous exertion, for the relaxation of a complete change for mind and body, and because of the inspiration to the spirit. To combine exploration with must, no doubt, so increase the interest as to well repay the augmented difficulties. All I would emphasize is that to climb anywhere repays the effort, even if it must be within reach of civilization and where others have gone before. To me there is ample reward in the uplift of the spirit; in the moral discipline, the keen interest, and the training to think, of a hard battle carefully planned, in the satisfaction of a love of adventure, and in the invigorating physical exercise."

", 16,140 ft., and latitude 61º 44', is within 60 ft. of the highest of the . The completion of the , 196 miles long, from to the famous of the , in April, 1911, brought Mt. Blackburn tow within 35 miles of civilization. I had gone to Alaska merely to see the wonderful scenery, of the southwest coast, by boat and train, and because I wished to see the only remaining pioneer region of America. Knowing that I should find no Swiss guides in Alaska, I had no idea of doing any serious mountain climbing. Indeed, it was late in July that I first read of Mt. Blackburn, by chance, in a prospector's cabin, in the wilds of the Kenai Peninsula, where I was hunting for a big brown bear. There, in a Report of the United States Geological Survey, Mt. Blackburn was mentioned as never having been ascended, and as "worthy of the hardiest mountaineer.""

"... my mother got a phone call from Dora one day. And it was in 1948. And she said to my mother, "Have you decided who you are going to vote for in the for ?" And my mother said, "No, I haven't." "Well," she said, "I'll be up to talk to you about it." And my mother was one vote. And she drove from all the way to for one vote."

"April, 1912, found her back again at , where she met George W. Handy, in whom she had confidence, and invited him to join the party. With six other men and dog sledges they started up on the 22nd. This time she was determined and would not be stopped if it were humanly possible to succeed. Thirty-three days altogether were spent on the snow and ice, 22 without tents and 10 almost without food. Caves dug in the snow provided shelter up to 12,000 feet. From there, in weather clearing after a succession of severe storms, she and Handy reached the summit on May 19, 8:30 a.m. It had taken four weeks. The view was perfect in every direction for up to 200 miles. The return took three days to Base Camp and two more to ."

"On May 19, 1912, after 27 days of climbing, Dora (one month shy of her 41st birthday) became the first person to reach the top of Mount Blackburn. When she got home, people flocked to her lectures and photo presentations about her climb. She used her platform to advocate for women’s rights and philanthropic causes. ... END NOTE: In the 1960’s, determined that the highest summit of Mount Blackburn wasn’t actually the eastern side that Dora (and George) climbed but the Western peak which is taller by 200 feet. However, the eastern route is much longer and harder, so many guides today still give her credit for this first ascent."

"Keen's experience on inextricably linked her with the . In 1914 she returned to explore the in , hiring the plucky Handy, a local sourdough, and a topographer from Boston. The later named a section of the near the Harvard Glacier the Dora Keen Range. Keen wrote and gave lectures about her expeditions. She wanted to reach out in particular to other women."

"... The conquest in 1895 of the grand old , and the unmerited notoriety attained thereby, spurred me on to the accomplishment of some deed which should render me worthy of the fame already acquired. The most feasible project seemed to be the ascent of in Mexico, its summit the highest point which had been reached in North America. This became, under the auspices of the ', in 1897, the easy goal of my ambition and gave me temporarily the world's record for women."

"Fortunate the traveler, who, 7 or 8 miles below Las Cuevas, has at the head of a side valley at the north a glimpse of colossal ' 15 miles away, a long ridge of snow arching into two domes, with a sheer drop of 10,000 feet on its black southern wall; and farther on a sight of ', 30 miles away at the south: both mountains first climbed in 1897 by the , though he unfortunately was compelled by to forego the satisfaction of attaining either summit himself. The first to reach the supposed apex of the , the top of Aconcagua, according to the latest measurement, 22,817 feet, was , the celebrated Swiss guide, who in almost every land has led English and Americans to the summits of noted mountains. Alone, January 14, 1897, he gained this height, and there erected a stone man as is the custom where possible. In April of the same year, the first ascent of Tupungato, 21,451 feet, was made also by Zurbriggen, and the Englishman, Vines."

"(1st edition 1913)"

"Interest was heightened by the knowledge that the 162,000 acres of land already cultivated in the , where is located, were to triple through a great irrigation project inaugurated by . In 1930 it was well under way when the project was abandoned. An American engineer, Charles W. Sutton, long in the service of Peru, was adding to his fame and usefulness by undertaking to bring from the Huancabamba River, tributary to the Amazon, by means of a tunnel through the mountains, water to supplement the service of the coastal streams."

"... this woman, now nearly sixty, with graying hair and steel-rimmed glasses, was a monster of persistence. She was determined to become the first known human to ascend the summit of the forbidding , which she hoped would prove to be the highest in the , the "apex of America." And so she went on to reach Huascarán's summit on her sixth onslaught. Her achievement was heralded by ' as "one of the most remarkable feats in the history of mountain-climbing." Upon her death at eighty-four, the ' called her the most famous of all women mountain climbers."

"After years of climbing, she made New Hampshire’s her final ascent in 1932. She was 82 years old. On her gravestone in is written: “You have brought uncommon glory to women of all time.”"

"Not everyone who starts the journey with you deserves to be with you at the end. You just need to realise who it is that you need to get to the next level"

"Just like our Grade 7 teachers were amazing, they were irrelevant for tertiary, right? Not because they were bad people, but they were not going to work for us. Many times in life, we are loyal to our own detriment."

"I have a love-hate relationship with Everest. It’s the weather, it’s the route… and when you acclimatise, you have to use supplemental oxygen.But you must never underestimate any mountain, because everyone has their own Everest."