High Altitude Climbing Quotes

Everest is not real climbing. It's rich people climbing. It's a trophy on the wall, and they're done... When I say I wish I'd never gone, I really mean that.

I don't know what being an Everest guide means. I am a coach, not a guide.

I'm kind of obsessed by Everest and all those men that mountaineer and take themselves to extreme limits. Having gone back to Scotland to work on Outlander, I've been climbing a lot and getting out in the Highlands.

There is such a gauntlet of risk that you go through when you climb up to Everest.

When you're climbing Mount Everest, nothing is easy. You just take one step at a time, never look back and always keep your eyes glued to the top.

When I lost seven of my toes on Nanga Parbat and small parts of my fingertips I knew I'd never be a great rock climber. So I specialized in high-altitude climbing.

The Slovenians are the very best climbers in the world.

No one remembers who climbed Mount Everest the second time.

I used to climb mountains a lot; I decided to go to Pakistan to climb K2, the world's second-highest mountain. I didn't get quite to the top.

Alpinism means you go by yourself with your own responsibility, knowing that you could die. But Everest now is more like ski tourism: preparing the piste, helping people go up, setting oxygen bottles near the summit.

From the first time I read John Krakauer's book 'Into Thin Air' in the early 2000s, I always thought this great adventure story would make a really good film. It has all the ingredients - a great location, disaster, interesting characters, and all forms of human emotion.

I am not sure the others are as committed as Rob Hall and Scott Fischer. I think there is more business now, and I know it will be impossible to stop this Everest business.

I am not so proud to climb all the 8,000-meter peaks, but I was proud to climb Nanga Parbat solo. That was the most elegant thing I did.

Adventure has to do with private, personal experiences. But, the possibilities, there are millions of unclimbed mountains - I have seen in the Eastern part of Tibet, mountains 6,000-6,500 meters high, vertical walls twice as tall as the Eiger... but nobody is going there, because they aren't 8,000-meter peaks.

The answer is that I do want to climb Everest, but I don't want to go to Everest. I don't want to be cold. I can't take the time. It's just not practical.

Rob Hall was, without doubt, the most competent guide in mountaineering.

I was first to understand it was boring to go with heavy shoes to base camp. When we first tried Dhaulagiri, a very difficult approach at high altitude, we needed very heavy boots. So it was usual to wear such heavy boots to approach all base camps. But I thought this was crazy. We needed lighter shoes for many of the approaches.

I became famous for the fact that I would break many, many limits. People said, 'He does all these crazy things.' But oddly it was a crazy thing only because scientists and climbers said, 'Everest and the 8,000-meter peaks without oxygen - impossible. Messner is becoming sick in his head.'

There's only a handful of chicks in the world who can climb big walls on my level.

I think Himalayan climbers tend to mature fairly late. I think most of the successful Himalayan climbers have ranged from 28 to just over 40, really.

My father blamed me for my brother Gunther's death, for not bringing him home. He died in an avalanche as we descended from the summit of Nanga Parbat, one of the 14 peaks over 8,000m, in 1970. Gunther and I did so much together. It was difficult for my father to understand what it was like up there.

I really haven't liked the commercialization of mountaineering, particularly of Mt. Everest. By paying $65,000, you can be conducted to the summit by a couple of good guides.

I still climb Mount Everest just as often as I used to. I play polo just as often as I used to. But to walk down to the hardware store I find a little bit more difficult

Everest is how it is right now. We have to fix ropes up there; we have the commercial expeditions. If you don't like that, go on another mountain or choose another part of the mountain. There's still space for everybody.

Every time I've been on Everest, people have died, though not in any expedition I was part of.