High Altitude Quotes

I was the first man to climb the world's 14 tallest peaks without supplementary oxygen, but I never asked how high I would go, just how I would do it.

Standing on the apex of our planet is humbling. I'm starved of oxygen, depleted of reserves, unable to eat, and bound by anxiety. This is a dangerous place. Yet the symbolism of standing on top of the world gives me a chance to experience time on a cosmic scale.

I'd rather climb Everest than go for a walk in the park.

You can show up at Everest having never really climbed before, because it's like hiking, basically. You can't show up on Meru and start up the thing unless you have years and years of experience. Climbing and spending time on the mountains is really the only way you can train.

Tibet is a beautiful and richly endowed region of our great motherland.

When I went to Everest, I underestimated things. I just didn't know what altitude could do. Or the cold - I especially didn't appreciate the cold. It can be just debilitating, and things can happen so quickly.

After decades of hauling telescopes around in the back of vans and going up to high altitude locations and so forth, I did finally build an observatory, here on Sonoma mountain.

El Capitan is the most chapping environment in the world: windy, cold, super dry. I wake up twice a night and reapply lotion to my hands. We sand our fingertips to keep them smooth.

The closer you get to heaven, the less air there is, because when you get to heaven for real, you don't need to breathe anymore.

We will fight evil, but we will do it from above 15,000 feet.

On Mount Everest it feels as if you are in the womb, but on K2 you are always out on the edge.

I wonder if it's like this for mountain climbers, he thought. You climb bigger and bigger mountains and you know that one day one of them is going to be just that bit too steep. But you go on doing it, because it’s so-o good when you breathe the air up there. And you know you'll die falling.

There are specific things in our world that are incredibly dangerous. Wingsuit BASE jumping is the very, very top of that. Big alpine climbing objectives are maybe right below that. I've probably had 20 friends die - people who were pretty close to me. I would say about 18 of them were because of snow.

I will say that the high road can get so high that you can get a nose bleed, in which case you have to get off the high road.

I just felt that space was the next thing coming in aviation. It was higher, faster. It had the risk.

There can be no possible question that cold is felt much more keenly in the thin air of nineteen thousand feet than it is below.

Despite all I have seen and experienced, I still get the same simple thrill out of glimpsing a tiny patch of snow in a high mountain gully and feel the same urge to climb towards it.

When I took on Everest, I'm not there for the views.

This is one of my definitions of mountaineering: to go where others do not.

Honestly, I do not experience fear in the mountains. On the contraryI feel my shoulders straightening, squaring, like the birds as they straighten their wings. I enjoy the freedom and the altitude. It is only when I return to life below that I feel the world's weight on my shoulders.

I wish they'd build a ski jump at the Grand Canyon; it'd be fantastic.

As a professional climber and photographer, I am asked to shoot in a lot of situations with a lot of different people. Sometimes I'm with the hardest, most seasoned alpinists in the world. Sometimes I'm hanging out with celebrities doing a benefit climb.

It's like being a bird, maybe, the perspective of flying over the Earth.

I'd like to jump out of a plane. I have a fear of heights I'd like to face.

Personally, I would rather climb in the high mountains. I have always abhorred the tremendous heat, the dirt-filled cracks, the ant-covered foul-smelling trees and bushes which cover the cliffs, the filth and noise of Camp 4 (the climbers' campground), and worst of all, the multitudes of tourists which abound during the weekends and summer months.