Mt Everest Quotes

If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.

Everest has always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics and others with a shaky hold on reality.

Getting to the top of any given mountain was considered much less important than how one got there: prestige was earned by tackling the most unforgiving routes with minimal equipment, in the boldest style imaginable.

It was titillating to brush up against the enigma of mortality, to steal a glimpse across its forbidden frontier. Climbing was a magnificient activity, I firmly believed, not in spite of the inherent perils, but precisely because of them.

This forms the nub of a dilemna that every Everest climber eventually comes up against: in order to succeed you must be exceedingly driven, but if you're too driven you're likely to die.

We were too tired to help. Above 8,000 meters is not a place where people can afford morality

If you're bumming out, you're not gonna get to the top, so as long as we're up here we might as well make a point of grooving. (Quoting Scott Fischer)

...I quickly came to understand that climbing Everest was primarily about enduring pain. And in subjecting ourselves to week after week of toil, tedium, and suffering, it struck me that most of use were probably seeking, above else, something like a state of grace.

Thus the slopes of Everest are littered with corpses.

Above the comforts of Base Camp, the expedition in fact became an almost Calvinistic undertaking. The ratio of misery to pleasure was greater by an order of magnitude than any mountain I'd been on; I quickly came to understand that climbing Everest was primarily about enduring pain. And in subjecting ourselves to week after week of toil, tedium and suffering, it struck me that most of us were probably seeking above all else, something like a state of grace.

When the climbers in 1953 planted their flags on the highest mountain, they set them in snow over the skeletons of creatures that had lived in the warm clear ocean that India, moving north, blanked out. Possibly as much as twenty thousand feet below the seafloor, the skeletal remains had turned into rock. This one fact is a treatise in itself on the movements of the surface of the earth. If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.

My hunger to climb had been blunted, in short, by a bunch of small satisfactions that added up to something like happiness.

I didn't doubt the potential value of paying attention to subconscious cues...problem was, my inner voice resembled Chicken Little: it was screaming that I was about to die, but it did that almost every time I laced up my climbing boots.

The plain truth is that I knew better but went to Everest anyway. And in doing so I was a party to the death of good people, which is something that is apt to remain on my conscience for a very long time.

It seems more than a little patronizing for Westerners to lament the loss of the good old days when life in the Khumbu was so much simpler and more picturesque. Most of the people who live in this rugged country seem to have no desire to be severed from the modern world or the untidy flow of human progress. The last thing Sherpas want is to be preserved as specimens in an anthropological museum.

Achieving the summit of a mountain was tangible, immutable, concrete. The incumbent hazards lent the activity a seriousness of purpose that was sorely missing from the rest of my life. I thrilled in the fresh perspective that came from the tipping the ordinary plane of existence on end.

Periodista: -¿Por qué vá a subir al Everest? Mallory: -Porque está ahí.

The urge to catalog the myriad blunders in order to “learn from the mistakes” is for the most part an exercise in denial and self-deception.

Looking out of a tent door into a world of snow and vanishing hopes. ~George Mallory

We cannot scale Mt Everest in 20 minutes, but give us two weeks, and we'll be back with T-shirts for everyone that read, "I climbed Mt. Everest and this lousy T-shirt is all I got.

If you take a hard look at the people in your life, you may be blown away by how many explorers and survivalists surround you. Everyday, I'm amazed by the number of people I meet, who have climbed Mt. Everest, time and time again... without ever having been to the Himalayas.

Walter Mittys with Everest dreams need to bear in mind that when things go wrong up in the Death Zone--and sooner or later they always do--the strongest guides in the world may be powerless to save a client's life; indeed, as the events of 1996 demonstrated, the strongest guides in the world are sometimes powerless to save even their own lives. Four of my teammates died not so much because Rob Hall's systems were faulty--indeed, nobody's were better--but because on Everest it is the nature of systems to break down with a vengeance.

The maid in the lime-color panties... She had a plain broad face and was the most virtuous woman alive: she laid for EVERYBODY, regardless of race, creed, color or place of national origin, donating herself sociably as an act of hospitality, procrastinating not even for the moment it might take to discard the cloth or broom or dust mop she was clutching at the time she was grabbed. Her allure stemmed from her accessibility; like Mt. Everest, she was there, and the men climbed on top of her each time they felt the urge.

Mt. Everest of Earth is 8.8 km tall; Mt. Olympus of Mars is 22 km tall. Every time you see a giant, you must know that that giant might be just a dwarf somewhere else!

I personally don't think grand gestures are actually romantic. The most romantic moments of my life have been so subtle and small. A snowstorm breakfast, a walk, an accidental meeting. Whenever you start planning these grand things, 'I'm gonna pick the great flower from the top of Mt. Everest', you're already losing. You're trying too hard.

Judging holiness by the standard of other men is useless. Two men standing at the foot of Mt. Everest don’t argue about who is taller. They look up and tremble.

I grew up with an ambition and determination without which I would have been a good deal happier.

Several authors and editors I respect counseled me not to write the book as quickly as I did; they urged me to wait two or three years and put some distance between me and the expedition in order to gain some crucial perspective. Their advice was sound, but in the end I ignored it - mostly because what happened on the mountain was gnawing my guts out. I thought that writing the book might purge Everest from my life. It hasn't, of course.

Mount Everest has a “death zone”. When a climber is in that zone, at very high altitude, he’s living on borrowed time. He will almost certainly need a good oxygen supply. All living tissue is starting to die (necrosis) thanks to the cold and the altitude. Unlike climbers, the higher that geniuses ascend, the more invigorated they become, the stronger their flesh and minds become. They experience the opposite of necrosis. They have entered the Life Zone.

Но иногда я спрашивал себя, неужели я проделал весь этот долгий путь только для того, чтобы понять, что на самом деле ищу то, что оставил позади

Aí está o nó do dilema que todo alpinista no Everest acaba tendo que enfrentar: para ter sucesso, você precisa estar bastante motivado, mas, se a motivação for excessiva, é provável que você morra.

The money itself didn’t seem terribly important to Fischer. He cared little for material things but he hungered for respect and he was acutely aware that in the culture in which he lived, money was the prevailing gauge of success.

Invece di raccogliere dei ricordi personali, Viesturs si sedette vicino a Fischer, lungo la discesa, trascorrendo qualche minuto da solo con lui. "Ehi, Scott, come te la passi?" chiese tristemente Ed al suo amico. "Che cosa ti è successo, amico?

Mortality had remained a conveniently hypothetical concept, an idea to ponder in the abstract. Sooner of later the divestiture of such a privileged innocence was inevitable, but when it finally happened the shock was magnified by the sheer superfluity of the carnage.

As I write these words, half a year has passed since I returned from Nepal, and on any given day during those six months, no more than two or three hours have gone by in which Everest hasn’t monopolized my thoughts. Not even in sleep is there respite: imagery from the climb and its aftermath continues to permeate my dreams.

Top of the Shitberg The first small turds that come out of you after getting stuffed on Indian or Mexican food. You're thinking, 'Is that it?' and a minute later the Mt. Everest of shit comes out of your ass - requiring two courtesy flushes followed by a plunger. Alternate meaning: A popular greeting among Jews living in Edwardian Dublin, when they met an the synagogue for morning services ~ 'Top of the shitberg to you, Seamus Goldberg.' 'And a top of the shitberg to you, Leopold Bloom.

La 18.20, Cotter l-a contactat pe Hall si i-a spus ca Jan Arnold sunase din Christchurch si astepta sa i se faca legatura. - Imediat, a spus Rob.Am gura uscata. Vreau sa inghit niste zapada inainte sa vorbesc cu ea. A revenit putin mai tarziu si a spus incet, cu o voce sparta si foarte distorsionata: - Buna, draga mea. Sper ca esti in pat si ca ti-e cald. Ce faci? - Nu pot sa-ti spun cat ma gandesc la tine! a raspuns Arnold. Pari mult mai bine decat ma asteptam. Ti-e cald dragule? - Avand in vedere altitudinea si imprejurimile, mi-e destul de bine, a spus Hall, facand tot posibilul sa nu o ingrijoreze. - Cum iti sunt picioarele? - Nu mi-am dat jos bocancii ca sa ma uit, dar cred ca am niste degeraturi. - De-abia astept sa te fac bine dupa ce vii acasa, a spus Arnold. Sunt convinsa ca o sa fii salvat. Sa nu te simti singur. Iti trimit toate gandurile mele bune! - Te iubesc. Somn usor, draga mea. Te rog sa nu-ti faci prea multe griji, i-a spus Hall sotiei sale inainte sa inchida. Acestea au fost ultimele cuvinte pe care le-am auzit de la el. (ultima convorbire dintre Rob Hall si sotia sa)

In drum spre varf, Viesturs a trecut pe langa cadravele inghetate ale lui Fischer si Hall. -Jean (sotia lui Fischer) si Jan(sotia lui Hall) m-au rugat sa le aduc obiecte personale, poveste rusinat Viesturs. Stiam ca Scott isi poarta verigheta atarnata la gat si voiam sa i-o duc lui Jeannie, dar n-am putut sa sap pe langa corpul lui neinsufletit. Pur si simplu nu am fost in stare. In loc sa ia suvenire, la coborare Viesturs s-a asezat langa Fischer si a stat cateva minute singur cu el. "Hei, Scott, ce faci?" l-a intrebat Ed cu tristete pe prietenul lui. "Ce s-a intamplat?

Experiments conducted in decompression chambers had by then demonstrated that a human plucked from sea level and dropped on the summit of Everest, where the air holds only a third as much oxygen, would lose consciousness within minutes and die soon thereafter. But a number of idealistic mountaineers continued to insist that a gifted athlete blessed with rare physiological attributes could, after a lengthy period of acclimatization, climb the peak without bottled oxygen. Taking this line of reasoning to its logical extreme, the purists argued that using gas was therefore cheating.

For the first time in months almost no wind blasted the summit, but the snow on the upper mountain was thigh deep, making for slow, exhausting progress. Kropp bulled his way relentlessly upward through the drifts, however, and by two o’clock Thursday afternoon he’d reached 28,700 feet, just below the South Summit. But even though the top was no more than sixty minutes above, he decided to turn around, believing that he would be too tired to descend safely if he climbed any higher. “To turn around that close to the summit …,” Hall mused with a shake of his head on May 6 as Kropp plodded past Camp Two on his way down the mountain. “That showed incredibly good judgment on young Göran’s part. I’m impressed—considerably more impressed, actually, than if he’d continued climbing and made the top.” Over the previous month, Rob had lectured us repeatedly about the importance of having a predetermined turnaround time on our summit day—in our case it would probably be 1:00 P.M., or 2:00 at the very latest—and abiding by it no matter how close we were to the top. “With enough determination, any bloody idiot can get up this hill,” Hall observed. “The trick is to get back down alive.

The mere fact that it is possible to frame a question does not make it legitimate or sensible to do so. There are many things about which you can ask, "What is its tempera- ture?" or "What color is it?" but you may not ask the tempera- ture question or the color question of, say, jealousy or prayer. Similarly, you are right to ask the "Why" question of a bicy- cle's mudguards or the Kariba Dam, but at the very least you have no right to assume that the "Why" question deserves an answer when posed about a boulder, a misfortune, Mt. Everest or the universe. Questions can be simply inappropriate, how- ever heartfelt their framing.

As an avid student of mountaineering history, I knew that Everest had killed more than 130 people since the British first visited the mountain in 1921—approximately one death for every four climbers who’d reached the summit—and that many of those who died had been far stronger and possessed vastly more high-altitude experience than I. But boyhood dreams die hard, I discovered, and good sense be damned. In late February 1996, Bryant called to say that there was a place waiting for me on Rob Hall’s upcoming Everest expedition. When he asked if I was sure I wanted to go through with this, I said yes without even pausing to catch my breath.

In quella primavera del 1996, sulle pendici dell'Everest, non mancavano i sognatori: le credenziali di molti aspiranti scalatori della montagna erano esili quanto le mie, se non di più. Quando per ciascuno di noi veniva il momento di valutare le proprie possibilità e di soppesarle contro la sfida formidabile rappresentata dalla montagna più alta del mondo, a volte si aveva l'impressione che metà della popolazione del campo base soffrisse di delusione clinica. Forse, però, non sarebbe dovuta essere una sorpresa: l'Everest ha sempre attirato come una calamita ciarlatani, cacciatori di pubblicità, inguaribili romantici e altri individui con una presa non troppo salda sulla realtà.

«Tornare indietro quando era così vicino alla vetta...», osservò Hall scuotendo la testa il 6 maggio, mentre Kropp superava il Campo Due diretto verso la base della montagna. «Questo giovane Goran sì che ha dimostrato un'incredibile capacità di giudizio. Sono colpito... molto più colpito, in effetti, che se avesse continuato la scalata fino alla cima.» Nel corso dei mesi precedenti, Rob ci aveva fatto molte prediche sull'importanza di calcolare in anticipo il limite di tempo utile per il ritorno - nel nostro caso sarebbe stato probabilmente l'una del pomeriggio, o al massimo le due - e di rispettarlo, per quanto fossimo vicini alla vetta. «Qualunque idiota può salire in cima a questa collina, se è abbastanza deciso a farlo», osservò Hall. «Il punto è tornare indietro vivi.»

The most visible effect of global warming in Montana, and perhaps anywhere in the world, is in Glacier National Park. While glaciers all over the world are in retreat—on Mt. Kilimanjaro, in the Andes and Alps, on the mountains of New Guinea, and around Mt. Everest—the phenomenon has been especially well studied in Montana because its glaciers are so accessible to climatologists and tourists. When the area of Glacier National Park was first visited by naturalists in the late 1800s, it contained over 150 glaciers; now, there are only about 35 left, mostly at just a small fraction of their first-reported size. At present rates of melting, Glacier National Park will have no glaciers at all by the year 2030. Such declines in the mountain snowpack are bad for irrigation systems, whose summer water comes from melting of the snow

The eight-man expedition was pinned down in a ferocious blizzard high on K2, waiting to make an assault on the summit, when a team member named Art Gilkey developed thrombophlebitis, a life-threatening altitude-induced blood clot. Realising that they would have to get Gilkey down immediately to have any hope of saving him, Schoening and the others started lowering him down the mountain's steep Abruzzi Ridge as the storm raged. At 25,000 feet, a climber named George Bell slipped and pulled four others off with him. Reflexively wrapping the rope around his shoulders and ice ax, Schoening somehow managed to single-handedly hold on to Gilkey and simultaneously arrest the slide of the five falling climbers without being pulled off the mountain himself. One of the more incredible feats in the annals of mountaineering, it was known forever after simply as The Belay.

His confession felt like finding out my cat—Sir Edmund Hillary, named after the first man to climb Mt Everest—could talk and wanted to give me a tongue bath. At best, Sir Hillary was indifferent to my existence. At worst, he may have been plotting my demise. He was an audacious Calico psychopath, always pushing his litterbox from its place beside the toilet in the bathroom directly in front of the shower, but only when I was in the shower…

Base Camp, We need advice. ... We've run out of Earth

I'd always known that climbing mountains was a high-risk pursuit. I accepted the danger that was an essential component of the game - without it, climbing would be little different from a hundred other trifling diversions. It was titillating to brush up against the enigma of mortality, to steal a glimpse across its forbidden frontier. Climbing was a magnificent activity, I firmly believed, not in spite of the inherent perils, but precisely because of them.

Relativity The height of my intelligence can only be determined by the depths of your ignorance, so, relatively speaking, I'm Mt. Everest and your the Mariana Trench.

We now live in an era known as the Anthropocene, which emphasizes that human activities are causing massive changes to our natural world at an unprecedented rate. Not one location on our planet, from the southern tip of Antarctica to the heights of Mt. Everest, has remained untouched by human influence. For example, fossil fuel burning has left an imprint on our immediate environment while the thin veil of the Earth’s atmosphere carries it to all portions of the globe. This reminds us of the following: (1) that we are all connected; (2) that we all leave an imprint; and (3) that the Earth that sustains us is finite. Today’s global crises are warnings that we must stop exploiting the abundance and vitality of our living home and begin to reconnect and honor the planet as many traditional societies have done for eons.

My nose is so big it’s like a mountain ridge on my face. Ladies, you could Mt. Everest, or you could mount me instead.

[M]ountaineering as a sport both emanates from and addresses itself back to (and back against) the normal patterns of middle class life. One of the dominant discourses of mountaineering [...] positions it critically against "bourgeois" existence, even as the sport demands the resources made possible by such an existence.

I reach the sad conclusion that at my age (older but not old), I will never learn to speak French, not even poorly. I will never climb Mt Everest or star in a Broadway play or en an off-off-Broadway one. I will never spelunk. A stanza from a poem by Donald Justice comes to mind: Men at forty/Learn to close softly/the doors to rooms they will not be/Coming back to. I am well past forty, and the doors are slamming shut so rapidly I am beginning to feel trapped.

Don’t let the bird of hopelessness build a nest on your head. Have you forgotten that the peak of Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain in the world was once part of the ocean floor?

Please don’t vomit. Please don’t vomit. Please don’t vomit. Saying I was nervous was like calling Mt. Everest a lovely little hill. I’d spilled my coffee at breakfast, stubbed my toe getting dressed, then forgot my purse when we left the house. I didn’t even remember the damn thing until we were half an hour into the ride.

Joshua Bliss has climbed mountains throughout the world, and his successful climbs include Mt. Kilimanjaro, Everest Basecamp, the Matterhorn, and many others.

Harnessing your thoughts, exercising control over them, is not as difficult as it might seem. (Neither, for that matter, is climbing Mt. Everest.) It is all a matter of discipline. It is a question of intent. The first step is learning to monitor your thoughts; to think about what you are thinking about. When you catch yourself thinking negative thoughts—thoughts that negate your highest idea about a thing—think again! I want you to do this, literally. If you think you are in a doldrum, in a pickle, and no good can come of this, think again. If you think the world is a bad place, filled with negative events, think again. If you think your life is falling apart, and it looks as if you’ll never get it back together again, think again. You can train yourself to do this. (Look how well you’ve trained yourself not to do it!)

As we age; the once once smallest anthills have become Mt. Everest.

Everest Base Camp Trek -14 Days is in the foothill of the world’s highest mountain, Mt. Everest expedition (8848m). The route leading to Everest Base Camp is simply fascinating. Moreover, the trek also explores the Sagarmatha National Park. Everest base camp is a fantastic opportunity to enjoy the Sherpa habitat and culture. Apart from Mount Everest (8848m), Everest Base CampTrek features the Sagarmatha National Park. The park is home to several rare species of plants and wildlife. The trek boasts merry villages like Namche Bazaar, Tengboche, Dingboche Island Peak, Mount Lobuche East Peak, and Mount Ama Dablam Expedition.

Everest Base Camp Trek -14 Days is in the foothill of the world’s highest mountain, Mt. Everest expedition (8848m). The route leading to Everest Base Camp is simply fascinating. Moreover, the trek also explores the Sagarmatha National Park. Everest base camp is a fantastic opportunity to enjoy the Sherpa habitat and culture. Apart from Mount Everest (8848m), Everest Base CampTrek features the Sagarmatha National Park. The park is home to several rare species of plants and wildlife. The trek boasts merry villages like Namche Bazaar, Tengboche, Dingboche Island Peak, Mount Lobuche East Peak, and Mount Ama Dablam Expedition. Read more Article

The summit of Mt. Everest is made of marine limestone which means the highest point on earth was once at the bottom of the sea.

Did you hear about the Irish attempt on Mt. Everest? They ran out of scaffolding

[Everest’s] fatality rate - the percentage of climbers who went above Base Camp and died - had averaged 0.7 the previous decade [1998 - 2008]…In 2008, the fatality rate of those leaving [K2] base camp for a summit bid was 30.5%, higher than the casualty rate at Omaha Beach on D-Day.

Try climbing Mt. Everest with skates on. Typical day to day.

I’d always known that climbing mountains was a high-risk pursuit. I accepted that danger was an essential component of the game—without it, climbing would be little different from a hundred other trifling diversions. It was titillating to brush up against the enigma of mortality, to steal a glimpse across its forbidden frontier. Climbing was a magnificent activity, I firmly believed, not in spite of the inherent perils, but precisely because of them.

For whatever reason, commercial mountain guide, Anatoli Boukreev raced down ahead of his group—which in fact had been his pattern throughout the entire expedition, as, his employer, Scott Fischer’s final letters and phone calls from Base Camp to Seattle made clear.

Sandy Hill Pittman was hysterical.