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Climbers' Reflections
Willi Unsoeld
"You've climbed the highest mountain in the world. What's left? It's all downhill from there. You've got to set your sights on something higher than Everest."
Peter Boardman — 1975, on the South Summit
"All the winds of Asia seemed to be trying to blow us from the ridge."
George Mallory — 1924
"We will stamp to the top with the wind in our teeth."
"The highest of the world's mountains, it seems, has to make but a single gesture of magnificence to be the lord of all, vast in unchallenged and isolated supremacy."
"Is this the summit, crowning the day? How cool and astonished... Have we vanquished an enemy? None but ourselves. Have we gained success? The word means nothing here. Have we won a kingdom? No... and yes..."
Sir Chris Bonington — 1975, on the Southwest Face
"Oh, the absolute lethargy of 24,600'. You want to pee, and you lie there for a quarter of an hour making up your mind to look for the pee bottle."
"The wind is the appalling enemy. It is mind-destroying, physically-destroying, soul-destroying..."
Stacy Allison — 1988, first American woman to summit Everest
"The end of the ridge and the end of the world... then nothing but that clear, empty air. There was nowhere else to climb. I was standing on the top of the world."
Ed Viesturs — 1996, five-time summitter of Everest
"A lot of people are here who shouldn't be here. Even some national teams, not just guided teams, are marginal. They're competent mountaineers, but Everest is another ball game."
Tenzing Norgay — 1953, first ascent
"I have climbed my mountain, but I must still live my life."
George Mallory — 1922, on his second summit attempt
"...it's an infernal mountain, cold and treacherous. Frankly, the game is not good enough: the risks of getting caught are too great; the margin of strength when men are at great heights is too small. Perhaps it's mere folly to go up again. But how can I be out of the hunt?"
Reinhold Messner — 1980, first solo ascent
"I was in continual agony; I have never in my whole life been so tired as on the summit of Everest that day. I just sat and sat there, oblivious to everything..."
Junko Tabei — 1975, first woman to climb Everest
"Technique and ability alone do not get you to the top; it is the willpower that is the most important. This willpower you cannot buy with money or be given by others... it rises from your heart..."
Peter Habeler — 1978, first oxygenless ascent
[After] the Hillary Step... we just lay on our bellies in the snow, gasping and immobile."
Noel Odell — 1924, on his search for Mallory & Irvine the day they disappeared
"This upper part of Everest must indeed be the remotest and least hospitable spot on earth, but at no time more emphatically and impressively so than when a darkened atmosphere hides its features and a gale races over its cruel face. And how and when more cruel could it ever seem then when baulking one's every step to find one's friends."
Makalu Gau — 1998, on how he survived the May '96 tragedy
"I ask myself, must be go ahead. Must be go exercise again. Then waiting and waiting, no sleeping, and waiting until the sun raised. Then I can... I have my life. I just talk to myself..."
Matt Dickinson — 1996, the north side
"As the wind gathered strength, it became abundantly clear that this was a storm unlike any other we had experienced in the previous weeks of our expedition. The full wrath of Everest's fury was unleashed all around us, with a blizzard potent enough to lift a climber off his feet and blow him off the mountain like a scrap of paper."
Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa — 1996, on trying to save Scott Fischer
"...I waited with Scott, determined to save him or die. Finally, he threatened me to save myself, saying that if I did not go down, he would jump to his death..."
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