Ed Viesturs Quotes
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Early on May 23, 1997, from 28,500 feet on Everest, I witnessed the incredible shadow of the mountain, the penumbra, forming to the west as the sun rose behind me. The full moon from the night before was still visible. The bluish cast of the atmosphere can also be seen.
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A simple but stark criterion: the number of climbers who successfully reach the summit compared to the number who die on the mountain. For Everest, the ratio turns out to be seven to one. For K2, which has the reputation of being the hardest and most dangerous of the high peaks, the ratio is a little over three to one. But for Annapurna, it’s exactly two to one. For every two climbers who get to the top, one climber dies trying.
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Morally, however, we had had absolutely no choice but to abort our summit try to help Thor and Chantal get down the mountain. That’s why I find it so hard to stomach all the accounts in recent years—especially on Everest—of climbers ignoring others in trouble for fear a rescue effort would sabotage their own summit bids.
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The men placed willow wands every 50 feet or so to mark their route—as I did in 1992, but as no one bothered to in 1986 or 2008, an oversight that contributed to both tragedies.
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There is nothing else in life like getting to the summit. What’s more, I’ve always felt that the greater the challenge, the greater the reward.
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It reminds me of a very wise saying about mountaineering that my wife, Paula, repeats often: “Just when you think you’ve got it figured out, you don’t.
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I believe that, with anything in life, if you have the patience, desire and passion, you can do whatever you set your mind to.
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Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.
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What drives my life is not the desire to get along with other people or make friends so much as a moral obligation to give back as much as—no, more than—I take. That’s karma. It’s really not so far from the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
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The summit is just a halfway point.
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K2 is not some malevolent being, lurking there above the Baltoro, waiting to get us. It's just there. It's indifferent. It's an inanimate mountain made of rock, ice, and snow. The "savageness" is what we project onto it, as if we blame the peak for our own misadventures on it.
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By now, a significant portion of the whole Sherpa economy depends on the spring and fall seasons on Everest.
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There are no short cuts to the top.
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The mountain decides whether you climb or not. The art of mountaineering is knowing when to go, when to stay, and when to retreat.
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That’s leadership: lead by example, lead from the front, inspire people to follow your lead.
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Getting to the top is optional, getting back down is mandatory. A lot of people forget about that.
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Mountaineering will never be a safe activity and would not be worth doing if it were.
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Dreams are not made to put us to sleep, but to awaken us.
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Mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
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Any “story” can be told in dozens of different ways. For that very reason, I believe, every time you go back and reexamine an important chapter in your life, you learn something new about it.
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There’s an old and honored tradition in exploration literature that you don’t air your dirty laundry in print. Whatever bickering, name-calling, grudge nursing, and dark funks really took place on the expedition, they’re nobody else’s business.
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Although I remain uncertain about God or any particular religion, I believe in karma. What goes around, comes around. How you live your life, the respect that you give others and the mountain, and how you treat people in general will come back to you in kindred fashion. I like to talk about what I call the Karma National Bank. If you give up the summit to help rescue someone who’s in trouble, you’ve put a deposit in that bank. And sometime down the road, you may need to make a big withdrawal.
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No matter what the future holds in store, I can say now—out loud, without hesitation—something that, sadly, all too few men and women can ever say: I have lived my dream.
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I like things that are difficult, physically and mentally. Things that are really challenging, things that really maybe take a long time but really push me to my limits.