Climbing Culture Quotes

The things that inform student culture are created and controlled by the unseen culture, the sociological aspects of our climbing culture, our 'me' generation, our yuppie culture, our SUVs, or, you know, shopping culture, our war culture.

I was always brought up to have a cup of tea at halfway up a rock face.

I cannot agree that mountain climbing is merely one manifestation of man's spiritual aspirations. I think instead it is a hysterical paroxysm of his infantile vanity.

I was a snowboard bum and a climbing bum.

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.

Climbing is not a competition, and you cannot talk in terms of 'greatest,' it means nothing.

I was born into a climbing family.

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 think speed climbing is kind of an artificial discipline. Climbers compete on the same holds and train on the same holds, which doesn't have much in common with the climbing philosophy in my opinion.

It's one of the ironies of mountaineering,' said Young, 'that grown men are happy to spend months preparing for a climb, weeks rehearsing and honing their skills, and at least a day attempting to reach the summit. And then, having achieved their goal, they spend just a few moments enjoying the experience, along with one or two equally certifiable companions who have little in common other than wanting to do it all again, but a little higher.

One of the reasons I wrote 'The Fall' is that climbing's more than a sport, it's a way of life. When you're in it, it's all you think about.

Is climbing, as a passion and as a sport, better off now than it was in the past? We can do harder climbs now in faster times - techniques are more refined and equipement more sophisticated - but are we really any better off?

Why is nobody questioning the sanity or suicidal tendencies of Everest ascenders? It's kind of a question of framing: How do you frame these activities? We frame them as freedom-loving, exciting, progressing sports and they are. But there are other ways to frame it. It's also true that these young men, neurologists say that their frontal lobes aren't developed yet - the long-term planning part of the brain.

Climbing is an understated culture.

To anyone writing about #dawnwall, this is not an effort to 'conquer.' It's about realizing a dream.

My mother and father met through climbing and it was totally natural that I would become a climber too.

I don't want to be guy that almost climbed Dawn Wall.

'Dirtbag' is just the term we use, like a 'gnarly dude' in surfing. Within the climbing culture, it means being a committed lifer: someone who has embraced a minimalist ethic in order to rock climb. It basically means you're a homeless person by choice.

As a kid I never had the impulse to climb anything. I think that most kids who live in small towns or rural areas outside of the city, that's what they do - climb walls, or trees, or whatever. To me, it was more dance classes and not being very boyish.

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.

Climbing for speed records will probably become more popular, a mania which has just begun. Climbers climb not just to see how fast and efficiently they can do it, but far worse, to see how much faster and more efficiently they are than a party which did the same climb a few days before. The climb becomes secondary, no more important than a racetrack. Man is pitted against man.

Climbing has so much more culture than all other activities put together. There is no culture in tennis, just a few names, a few dates. No big culture in soccer. But we have thousands of books, great philosophers, thinkers, painters.

I think in general the American scene is much more focused on bouldering, where in Europe they're more focused on sport climbing.

Stuffwise we are not a lean operation. We're the kind of people who, if we were deciding what absolute minimum essential items we'd need to carry in our backpacks for the final, treacherous ascent to the summit of Mount Everest, would take along aquarium filters, just in case.