Tommy Caldwell Quotes

I've done routes where I've climbed 200 feet off the ground and just been, like, 'What am I doing?' I then just climbed back down and went home. Discretion is the better part of valor. Some days are just not your day. That's the big thing with free soloing: when to call it.

It lasted but a year of two, till all the routes were done. The pace so fast that most forgot that climbing could be fun.

I started very early, from five or six years old, to climb. To climb trees, to climb rocks everywhere I could. At some point, of course, I used a rope.

Seven years ago, when I started free soloing long, hard routes in Yosemite - climbing without a rope, gear or a partner - I did it because it seemed like the purest, most elegant way to scale big walls. Climbing, especially soloing, felt like a grand adventure, but I never dreamed it could be a profession.

I think climbing is less a sport and more a hobby, and as such, I think everybody's a beginning climber.

To be clear, I normally climb with a rope and partner. Free-soloing makes up only a small percentage of my total climbing. But when I do solo, I manage the risk through careful preparation. I don't solo anything unless I'm sure I can do it.

I grew up rock climbing.

There are many questions, but I cannot answer because I'm not a businessman, I am a climber.

I don't regard myself as a cracking good climber. I'm just strong in the back. I have a lot of enthusiasm, and I'm good on ice.

As I get more experienced, I love the idea of going into big mountains and doing big climbs. But the problem is, it's getting more dangerous, especially alpine climbing.

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.

People say, 'Are you insane?' But the most successful climbers are the most calculating, with the most refined sense of risk. They're hyper-conscious of safety. They're the least insane people I know.

Around half of the top alpinists have died climbing. Of course if I'm careful and turn back more often than the others, I can increase my chances of survival. But if I hadn't been lucky a few times, I wouldn't be here.

What I like about climbing that it's so broad. For certain periods I can focus on sport climbing and then I can shift my focus more on the bouldering or I can shift my focus on climbing in the mountains.

I do not climb really dangerous stuff.

I'm practical, very data-driven and process-oriented. I'm very objective and analytical about everything. Ninety-five percent of situations on the wall are not that dangerous. Most people look at the climb and think, 'that's crazy.' But when you know the intricacies of your gear, the belay situation and the forces involved, it's pretty safe.

Before you invest, you must ensure that you have realistically assessed your probability of being right and how you will react to the consequences of being wrong.

You just see your hands, your ice axe, and your crampons...and they have to just move.

If you roll dice, you know that the odds are one in six that the dice will come up on a particular side. So you can calculate the risk. But, in the stock market, such computations are bull - you don't even know how many sides the dice have!

Proper accounting is like engineering. You need a margin of safety. Thank God we don't design bridges and airplanes the way we do accounting.

There is probably no pleasure equal to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp; but it is a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can find pleasure in it.

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

The real, in all this efforts, is that we climb just for climbing.

So the laws of good driving forbade you to go off the magic ribbon except in extreme emergencies. You were ethically entitled to several inches of margin at the right-hand edge; and the man approaching you was entitled to an equal number of inches; which left a remainder of inches between the two projectiles as they shot by. It sounds risky as one tells it, but the heavens are run on the basis of similar calculations, and while collisions do happen, they leave time enough in between for universes to be formed, and successful careers conducted by men of affairs.

We pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk, yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities, building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones.