| QUOTE
| AUTHOR |
| "But now that I was finally here, standing on the summit of Mount Everest , I just couldn't summon the energy to care. "
| Jon Krakauer |
| "Such arrogance, I believe, is dangerous for any climber, but it is especially dangerous for one who purports to be a Himalayan guide "
| Jon Krakauer-regarding Anatoli Boukreev and the 1996 disaster |
| "Well, we knocked the bastard off !"
| Edmund Hillary, on first climbing Mount Everest |
| "Wouldn't Mallory be pleased if he knew about this"
| Sir Edmund Hillary-descending 1953
|
| "The highest of the world's mountains, it seems, has to make but a single gesture of magnificence to be the lord of all, vast in unchallenged and isolated supremacy."
| George Mallory, 1924 |
| "Oh, the absolute lethargy of 24,600'. You want to pee, and you lie there for a quarter of an hour making up your mind to look for the pee bottle."
| Chris Bonnington, 1975
|
| "We agreed that this was going to be no ordinary climb. For the time being, Everest was rather more than a mountain."
| John Hunt, leader of the '53 expedition
|
| "I have not conquered Everest, it has merely tolerated me"
| Peter Habeler |
| "All the winds of Asia seemed to be trying to blow us from the ridge."
| Peter Boardman, 1975, about the South Summit |
| "We encourage young people to go out and exceed thier goals. Everest is an icon of that"
| Neil Beidleman
|
| "The wind is the appalling enemy. It is mind- destroying, physically- destroying, soul- destroying..."
| Chris Bonnington, 1975
|
| "No one remembers who climbed Mount Everest the second time."
| Na Nook
|
| "Everest for me, and I believe for the world, is the physical and symbolic manifestation of overcoming odds to achieve a dream." -
| Tom Whittaker
|
| "You've climbed the highest mountain in the world. What's left ? It's all downhill from there. You've got to set your sights on something higher than Everest."
| Willi Unsoeld |
| "You feel like you're one giant lung, as if breathing is all there is to life."
| Mike Groom
|
| "Altitude is the great equalizer"
| Anonymous
|
| "There was no more grass, no flowers, not even any moss: dusty granite blocks covered the ice and an occasional grinding groan reminded us that we were on a slow-moving glacier."
| Chris Bonington |
| "Technique and ability alone do not get you to the top; it is the willpower that is the most important. This willpower you cannot buy with money or be given by others..it rises from your heart"
| Junko Tabei-1975 after becoming first woman to climb Everest |
| "I can't understand why men make all this fuss about Everest--it's only a mountain"
| Junko Tabei |
| "Mountains don't kill people, they just sit there..."
| Ed Viesturs
|
| "We just lay on our bellies in the snow, gasping and immobile."
| Peter Habeler, 1978, first oxygenless ascent [After] the Hillary Step.
|
| "I must make top, you know . I know want go up more but, is not possible to make sponsors if no success here"
| Mark Batard-tried to reach summit in 24 hours
|
| "Pasang and I, at either end of the break, managed to scramble off the moving sheet of snow, and Riddiford was left suspended between the two of us while the sheet broke into great blocks and slid silently into the trough."
| Eric Shipton, 1951 on the Khumbu Ice Fall |
| "Don't forget it's really just a big pile of rocks"
| David Breashears |
| "We have founded a support group for Everest climbers called Everest Anonymous, members can call each other up for support when thier thinking about returning to the mountain"
| David Breashears |
| "Getting to the summit is optional, getting down is mandatory"
| Ed Viesturs |
| "Everest is a matter of universal of human endeavor, a cause from which there is no withdrawl, whatever loses it may demand"
| G.O. Dyrenfurth
|
| "The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this, 'What is the use of climbing Mount Everest ?' and my answer must at once be, 'It is no use'.
There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behavior of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. It's no use.
So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for."
| George Leigh Mallory, 1922
|
| "Because it is there."
| George Mallory (1886-1924), answer to the question 'Why do you want to climb Mt. Everest ?'.
|
| "I have climbed my mountain ,but I must still live my life"
| Tenzing Norgay |
| "Hey, look, don't worry too much about me"
| Rob Hall ..His last words via satellite radio-phone to his pregnant wife in New Zealand |
| "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.
| Edmund Hillary, referring to the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay. |
| "Pissing through 6 inches of clothes with a 3 inch penis"
| Anonymous Everest summiteer when asked what was the hardest thing about climbing Mt Everest |
| "We will stomp to the top with the wind in our teeth."
| George Mallory, 1924
|
| "I was in continual agony; I have never in my life been so tired as on the summit of Everest that day. I just sat and sat there, oblivious to everything..
| Reinhold Messner, 1980 |
| "The end of the ridge and the end of the world... then nothing but that clear, empty air. There was nowhere else to climb. I was standing on the top of the world."
| Stacy Allison, first American woman to summit Everest |
| "I am nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung, floating over the mists and summits."
| Reinhold Messner |
| "Mountains are not fair or unfair, they are just dangerous."
| Reinhold Messner.
|
