Mountain Experience Quotes

One day's exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books.

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.

So I've been pushed farther and farther out into the mountains, but at the same time realizing that that experience is really nice and I'm glad I'm getting pushed out there farther.

I was making a film called The White Tower at the foot of Mont Blanc - the one thing I learned from that experience was that it's more difficult to go down a mountain than to go up. A lot of people don't realize that.

There's only one way to gain mountain sense, and that's to be in the mountains a lot. Unfortunately, when you're a young climber, you have none. You're out there, and your risk level is high.

Wherever we go in the mountains, we find more than we seek.

Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest! Days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God. Nevermore, however weary, should one faint by the way who gains the blessings of one mountain day; whatever his fate, long life, short life, stormy or calm, he is rich forever.

I...am always glad to touch the living rock again and dip my hand in the high mountain air.

I cannot say to be glad or not glad to be on Everest. It is my life. I have opportunity to be here, so I am here.

We must learn to live in the ordinary 'gray' day according to what we saw on the mountain.

Late in August the lure of the mountains becomes irresistible. Seared by the everlasting sunfire, I want to see running water again, embrace a pine tree, cut my initials in the bark of an aspen, get bit by a mosquito, see a mountain bluebird, find a big blue columbine, get lost in the firs, hike above timberline, sunbathe on snow and eat some ice, climb the rocks and stand in the wind at the top of the world on the peak of Tukuhnikivats.

If you have a high-way on Everest, you don't meet the mountain. If everything is prepared, and you have a guide who is responsible for your security, you cannot meet the mountain. Meeting mountains is only possible if you . . . are out there in self-sufficiency.

He was free to enjoy the breathless glee that overwhelmed him: the speed, the clear cold air, the total silence, the feeling of balance and excitement and peace.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

I have a low opinion of books; they are but piles of stones set up to show coming travelers where other minds have been, or at best signal smokes to call attention. No amount of word-making will ever make a single soul to know these mountains. As well seek to warm the naked and frostbitten by lectures on caloric and pictures of flame. One day's exposure to mountains is better than cartloads of books.

Not since Moses has anyone seen a mountain so greatly.

I think that a good mountaineer is usually a sensible mountaineer.

If you have never visited the valleys, the view from the mountain top is not breathtaking.

I think, every time I'm on the mountain, I'm just so thankful to be there.

Mountains were once my big adventure but is is over since a long time; I still dream from the wonderful days sometimes, read also a few pages from a mountain book. But the thought of doing again active mountain climbing has faded.

It's about the pleasure of being in the mountains, traveling efficiently over the terrain, having that sense of dynamic motion which you don't get when you're on foot.

I want to look into the dark spaces in people's souls. At what happens to us when we go to the mountains.

Meru was the most challenging climb of my life. Not once but twice.

If you want to train for big mountain endeavors, spend time in big mountains.

We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us. Our flesh-and-bone tabernacle seems transparent as glass to the beauty about us, as if truly an inseparable part of it, thrilling with the air and trees, streams and rocks, in the waves of the sun,-a part of all nature, neither old nor young, sick nor well, but immortal.‎