Yvon Chouinard Quotes

For me, my training is a key part of my work as so often my life has depended on being able to move fast and haul myself up and out of something fast!

When you're doing mountain rescue, you don't take a doctorate in mountain rescue; you look for somebody who knows the terrain. It's about context.

When I was a kid, while touring East Berlin - back when there was an East Berlin - I got my left foot stuck in an escalator in Alexanderplatz. A few hours later, thanks to blowtorches and chainsaws and East German soldiers and the U.S. Embassy, my foot was released, and I along with it.

His unit is in charge of 5,000 homes, and they've only been able to search about 2 percent of them. People are standing on roofs or sticking their hands out of air vents so they can get rescued.

I know that when I'm standing alone below a thousand-foot wall, looking up and considering a climb, my sponsors are the furthest thing from my mind. If I'm going to take risks, they are going to be for myself - not for any company.

We enter the government essentially in a hotel that is on fire. We're throwing people from the windows into the pool to save their lives and this is the evaluation of the Olympic diving committee: Well, the splash was too big.

If you like the outdoors, Colorado is a big adventure playground for adults: it's great for skiing, cycling, climbing, and hiking.

I said to Scott that the ascent seemed to be going slowly and that I was concerned descending climbers could possibly run out of oxygen before their return to camp IV.

Concerned that others were not coming onto the summit and because I had no radio link to those below me, I began to wonder if there were difficulties down the mountain. I made the decision to descend.

What the world needs is an Emergency Boss. An Emergency Czar. An Emergency Commander. A true Master Of Disaster. One person completely responsible for the anticipation, immediate reconnaissance, and urgent execution of rescue and relief efforts around the world.

I have faith the men and women of the Coast Guard will immediately rise to the challenge and see the people hit by Katrina through until the storm has truly calmed.

Most people go to the office and sit at a desk. When firefighters go to the office, we might birth a baby in the morning, save a drowning surfer in the afternoon, and run into a fire at night. What could be more interesting than that?

I think in the wake of Katrina, the Coast Guard may well have been the only entity or agency that came out of that exercise free of fault and free of blame.

The time when people really want government is in an emergency.

What makes climbing great for me, strangely enough, is this life-and-death aspect. It sounds trite to say, I know, but climbing isn't just another game. It isn't just another sport. It's life itself. Which is what makes it so compelling and also what makes it so impossible to justify when things go bad.

Drones, with their agility and small size, seem perfect for search and rescue operations.

I love what I do, both aspects - fighting and being a firefighter and paramedic.

Firefighters and rescue workers are American superheroes.

When the bombs rain down, the Syrian Civil Defense rush in.

I rescue people.

Mountains are not fair or unfair - they are dangerous.

The Coast Guard evokes images of search and rescue operations, maybe during Hurricane Katrina, or guys jumping out of helicopters wearing snorkels and fins - and that's accurate, but only part of the picture.

Hey, guys!" Grover yelled somewhere above us. "I think she's unconscious!" "Roooaaarrr!" "Maybe not," Grover corrected.

At some point, we have to stop a force that's going out and drowning people in steel cages and chopping off heads.

So we have a tremendous amount of water where the two greatest rivers in North America meet. And then all of the tributaries from the various areas come in there also. It's also highly populated. So we're working a number of water rescues. We're working extremely hard to keep people safe and make sure that we're keeping the rule of law and keep people warm. It's been pretty cold.