Ueli Steck Quotes

I always wanted to try Mt. Everest since I was a kid. I never thought I would be able to do anything like that.

You want to climb the mountain because it’s there and you know you can do it.

I like to think of Everest as a great mountaineering challenge, and when you've got people just streaming up the mountain - well, many of them are just climbing it to get their name in the paper, really.

I climb mountains.

I told them, you can succeed - it's not likely the first time, maybe 25 per cent, but you CAN succeed. You can also die. By April 16 they had already been to camp III, well ahead of most teams.

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.

Meeting Australian mountaineer and author Tim Macartney-Snape when I was 16 in 1994 had a big impact on me. His ascent of Everest from sea to summit captured my imagination.

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

It's such a liberating feeling to go out of your comfort zone, to be independent and strike out on my own without my parents.

Of course I climbed Everest without oxygen, but it's not the end of the story for me. The summit itself is not what counts. It's how'd you get there, what'd you climb, and there are really great opportunities to climb on this mountain. It's a beautiful place.

The experienced mountain climber is not intimidated by a mountain - he is inspired by it.

- Why do you want to climb Mt. Everest, Sir? - Because it is there.

You won't find reasonable men on the tops of tall mountains.

While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn't the end of everything. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.

I'm not afraid to take chances or go off on my own.

I am restless. I don't mind leaving this comfortable, static life. I could live a year on my own in a remote village.

My Antarctic expedition is just about doable, just feasible and that's what is exciting to me. If I knew it was possible, if I knew I could do it without too much bother, I wouldn't be interested.

I did not set out to be a poster child for anything. I saw a mountain. I wanted to climb it.

I spent the night on a sliver of rock high up on the east face of Long's Peak, climbing with Tom Frost, and slept at the icy feet of the Dru, listening to the lightning crack above me and the thunder roll down. I only did it to write about it. I would never go up on the Grotto Wall for fun.

I have lots of other mountains that I would like to climb. I have no dream of Everest, but there are some, like Mount Fuji, I'd like to do.

You can get a lawyer with two months off or a New York socialite who wants to play at being Lewis and Clark and put them up there, but Everest is still in charge; it can still kick butt.

Anybody that wants to walk out that door and leave home for a few months and rely on themselves instead of fate might have some interesting stories to tell.

If I see someone doing a new sport, I usually like to throw myself into it, and I never look at it and think, 'That's something I can't do.'

As a child I was the best tree climber in our neighbourhood, I was like a little monkey. I've never been afraid of hurting myself or a little physical discomfort.

Why climb? That's a question that baffles me. It perplexes me. I really asked that a lot on Everest. I can't justify it. I can't say it's for a good cause. All I can say is look at the history of exploration: it's full of vainglorious pursuits.