Yosemite National Park Quotes

Climbs like the Dawn Wall don't come around every day.

California, more than any other part of the Union, is a country by itself, and San Francisco a capital.

El Capitan is the most chapping environment in the world: windy, cold, super dry. I wake up twice a night and reapply lotion to my hands. We sand our fingertips to keep them smooth.

I go to Yosemite a lot. To get there, you fly from L.A. to Fresno and rent a car. So I know about Fresno. It looks like the entire city was built in 1946 in three months - all these low California ranch style homes. The whole city looks like that.

The verdict is for the trumpeter swan and against the army. The army will have to find another nesting place.

California: The west coast of Iowa.

Already renewable energy advocates are noting that the 42 miles of above-ground right-of-way between Yosemite and the city could be fitted with enough solar panels to generate at least 40 megawatts per year - a proposal the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has never seriously considered because they currently aren't required to do so.

The Dawn Wall is so obviously the hardest big-wall climb in the world, so that was the challenge.

One of the reasons the Dawn Wall climb went so viral is that you get great Internet access on El Cap. It's like the best Internet access in all of Yosemite, so we had our phones with us.

Yosemite has the most impressive and accessible granite big walls in the world. The rock is amazing. And because of that, it's been the mecca for climbing in the U.S. - and the world to a large degree - for all of climbing history. It's the place to test yourself against the historic routes of the past.

The great rocks of Yosemite, expressing qualities of timeless yet intimate grandeur, are the most compelling formations of their kind. We should not casually pass them by, for they are the very heart of the earth speaking to us.

About California... "I thought it was an appalling place. Then I went through a period of being amused by it. Now it's sort of both. Californians don't have that marvelous British cynicism, but then the British can be so patronizing at times.

A queer fellow and a jolly fellow is the grasshopper. Up the mountains he comes on excursions, how high I don't know, but at least as far and high as Yosemite tourists.

Every climb is different. The Dawn Wall was so dry and aggressive that my fingers would dry out to the point where they would crack. So I actually had to add as much moisture as possible.

I think it's possible to climb the Dawn Wall in a single day. No matter what, it would be really, really hard.

I can tell you I love California - and no more.

California is an unbelievable state.

I began taking pictures in the natural world to be able to show people what I was experiencing when I climbed and explored in Yosemite in the High Sierra.

I must return to the mountains-to Yosemite. I am told that the winter storms there will not be easily borne, but I am bewitched, enchanted, and tomorrow I must start for the great temple to listen to the winter songs and sermons preached and sung only there.

The coniferous forests of the Yosemite Park, and of the Sierra in general, surpass all others of their kind in America, or indeed the world, not only in the size and beauty of the trees, but in the number of species assembled together, and the grandeur of the mountains they are growing on.

It would be really easy to write off the Dawn Wall as impossible. In terms of climbing technique, I'm learning a new language on this granite.

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

Ink cannot tell the glow that lights me at this moment in turning to the mountains. I feel strong [enough] to leap Yosemite walls at a bound.