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“I’ve been climbing for over 25 years. During that time at least once a year, someone, a non climber has inevitably come and asked why I climbed.

 

I probably gave 25 reasons from “It’s great adventure” to “I’m no good at ball sports”, to “I’ve got nothing else to do”.Truth is, I’ve never been quite sure and never cared to dwell on it.  All I cared about was when”.

Climber Duane Raleigh

 

Mountaineer, me? I am an adventurer. By adventure I mean search, in all directions, in every way.

Gary Hemming, American mountaineer.

 

 

"Look at those assholes over there, ordinary fuckin' people - I hate them.

An ordinary person spends his life avoiding tense situations.

A Repo man spends his life getting into them."

From Repo Man...

 

 

“Life is too short for chess”

Hemmingway

 

“Escape is the flip side of just existing”.

Herbret Ypma

 

“To revolt is a natural tendency of life.

Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt”.

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876), Russian political theorist.

 

 

“Never did I feel so alive, never did the earth and all of my surroundings look so bright and sharp.    I had more than my life”.

U.S Bomber pilot after 50 missions over Berlin, 1944

 

 

“Boredom kills and those it does not kill it cripples and those it does not cripple it bleeds like a leech, leaving its victims pale, insipid and brooding”.

Blaine Harding

 

"We're designed to be hunters but we're in a society of shopping.

There's nothing to kill anymore, nothing to fight, nothing to overcome, nothing to explore" .....

Fight Club

 

 

“It doesn’t have to be fun, to be fun”.

Climber Mark Twight

 

 

“There are only 3 sports; bullfighting, motor-racing and mountaineering, the rest being merely games”.

Writer Ernest Hemingway

 

 

”Whatever you do in life, you can never grow in self-esteem unless you get good and pumped first and stay that way.Anytime you spend not being pumped is time you can never get back again. I wouldn’t let any opportunities get away if I were you”.

Body-building legend, Franco Columbo

 

 

“Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived, or he who has stayed securely on the shore and merely existed”.

Writer Hunter S Thompson, aged 17

 

 

“It’s not the goal of adventure to face peril but it is one of the tests one must undergo to deserve the right to rise above the state of the crawling grubs”.

Climber Lionel Terray

 

 

“Doing what I do, I have faced death many times. When it’s over you celebrate the fact that you’re alive. Everything for an instant seems sweeter, brighter, louder”.

Big Wall climber Dan Osman

 

 

“You’re not going to like it but its gotta be said,

One day you’re nobody,

Next day you’re nobody - dead”.

Rock band - One Minute Silence

 

 

“Sanity is the playground of the unimaginative”.

Anon

 

 

“At either end of the social spectrum, lies a leisure class”.

Eric Beck

 

 

“It occurred to me that it was probably all meaningless anyway - a kind of game. But if it takes a game to keep me alive, so be it”.

Harry Crews

 

 

“Behind the mystiques of adventure there lies a refusal to take aging seriously”.

David Roberts, “Moments of Doubt”.

 

 

“Risk is the knife that pares away life’s trivia”.

Mark Twight

 

 

“Only when faced with death, does the true purpose of being alive become clear”.

Cancer survivor C.L.Green

 

 

“I’ll die young but it’s like kissing God”.

Lenny Bruce (1925–1966), U.S. comic, on his drug addiction.

 

 

“All the unhappiness of man stems from one thing only.

That he is incapable of staying quietly in his room”.

Writer Pascal

 

 

“Take a dip in the Reality Bath”.

Mark Twight

 

 

“I was desperate and scared. But I had never felt so alive”.

Mauro Prosperi. first man to trek the Sahara East to West, solo, unsupported.

 

 

"Then came the biggest fear. Not the threat of imminent injury, but the fear that if I didn’t go back up, I would be a chickenshit forever".

Climber John Sherman.

 

 

“Flow is a state of experience that is engrossing, intrinsically rewarding and is outside the parameters of everyday worry and boredom.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi 1990

(This theory came about from studying people who devoted themselves to activities that did not have inherent outside rewards, such as money and fame, but had intrinsic rewards such as peace of mind, self satisfaction and worth and a feeling of deep self expression).

 

 

“Addictions can be very, very bad but addiction itself is not bad. It’s a case of what you’re addicted to. You better live each day like it’s your last, ‘cos one day you’re going to be right”.

Musician Ray Charles.

 

 

“I was coming home the other day thinking about an upcoming trip feeling the slow drip of anticipation start up. I started to get that crawling feeling up the back of my neck and running down the underside of my arms.

I started to think about the beast within and how it’s getting hungry again. The feeling of looking down, just to get comfortable with the exposure before making that first turn or that first move. And digging that roar.

Jae Ellers

 

 

“War is the locomotive of social change”.

Anon

 

 

Life is too short for chess”

Writer Henry James Byron

 

 

The more improbable the situation and the greater the danger, the more sweetly the blood flows later in release from all that tension.

Perhaps this is the rationale of all risk sports; you raise the ante of effort and concentration to clear your mind of trivialities”.

Writer A Alvarez. “The Savage God”.

 

 

“The Edge, there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are those who have been over it”.

Hunter S Thompson

 

 

"Whenever I see an old lady slip and fall on the wet pavement, my first instinct is to laugh.  But then I think: What if I was a rat and she fell on me? Then it wouldn’t seem quite so funny."

Aaron Lowndes

 

"To play it safe is not to play"

Robert Altman

 

 

“You don’t burn out from going too fast You burn out from going too slow and getting bored”.

Cliff Burton (1962 – 86) Metallica bassist.

 

 

“At some point every normal man must spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and begin to slit throats”.

Writer H. L. Mencken

 

 

There’s not much adventure left. Unless you look for it.”

Climber Fred Beckey

 

 

In this modern age, very little if nothing remains real. For me, only my time spent in the high places remains the reality of my existence. It is the only thing that is real and true. It is my life."

Gaston Rebuffat

 

 

The Puking Gecko, Grand Wall, *** S9 5.12d/e 712m - An intimidating and salacious climb. The final pitch is so exposed, tricky, and continuously strenuous that it is impossible to even contact the rock at any point. Better than making passionate love on top of a Japanese Bullet Train. Superbly magnificent and grimly brilliant.

Andy Cairns

 

 

10 March, 0 hours climbing. Write 5 pages to mother-in-law, getting desperate.

Dave Johnson's journal entry while stormbound in Alaska.

 

 

Mountaineering, noun. Slow walking uphill while not feeling very well.

Definitions of climbing.

 

 

Nothing substitutes for a long apprenticeship and a heap of experience. This converts into the base of intuition.

Doug Scott

 

 

This is the fucking life, no?

Jean Afanassieff, the first French climber on the summit of Everest and while smoking a cigarette.

 

 

Fuck, could you be any slower!!! If you were in the mountains, you'd be dead!!

John Fantini belaying a second while rockclimbing.

 

 

All change in history, all advances, comes from nonconformity. If there had been no troublemakers, no dissenters, we should still be living in caves.

A. J. P. Taylor

 

 

The adventurer gambles with life to heighten sensation, to make it glow for a moment.

Jack London

 

 

It has to be real enough to kill you.

Mountaineer Willi Unsoeld.

 

 

Without adventure, civilization is in full decay.

Alfred North Whitehead