"I believe that fear is the most powerful and detrimental emotion in life and the biggest culprit keeping us from our dreams...Fear can keep you alive, but it can also keep you from living." — Jeremy Jones The Art of Shralpinism
"...each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself...To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top." — Robert M. Pirsig Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
"Grief is much like this: learning to hold joy and suffering, presence and absence, mourning and love, together, like the braided strands of a rope that still connects us as we move forward into an uncertain future." — Mailee Hung For the Love of Climbing, Episode 37, "The Arc"
"We know that we want to be more present, but very often we don’t do it. We need a friend or a teacher to remind us. The Earth can be that teacher. It is always there, greeting your feet, keeping you solid and grounded." — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Walk
"There are things you can’t control, so you’d better know how you’re going to react to them." — Laurence Gonzales Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
"I, too, want to create a cartography for my life that only I can draw. It's no longer that important to me to place a flag on a summit and check it off on my map. What matters most are the questions that I ask myself between each mountain, and the answers that lead me to the next one. I want to grow with the evolution of these lines and with the spaces between them." — Kazuya Hiraide, translated from Japanese by Hiko Ito Alpinist Magazine, Issue 75, "A Map of the Heart: From Shispare to Rakaposhi"
"The rope comes tight to my harness and I follow it into the maze of snow flutings. My movements feel in tune with our environment. A rhythmic tempo takes over my thoughts: I simply kick, step and breathe. Our line of ascent feels like water flowing uphill, naturally rolling through the terrain. An expression of life rather than a fight for survival." — Michael Gardner Alpinist Magazine, Issue 77, "Worth the Weight"
"Perhaps [Charles] Pratt's ultimate wisdom took the form of acceptance: understanding that veiled depths surround us. Which, like looming exposure, might suddenly jump at you. Or like serendipitous beauty, might delight. Both sensations are perfectly OK, equally wondrous. And the shapes they assume depend more on your mindset than on the thing itself." — Doug Robinson Alpinist Magazine, Issue 74, "Letters to a Young Climber"
"When the air chills, I, too, watch myself turn, temporarily, to crystal. Rime slowly forms along the loose strands of my hair, in thicker and thicker flowers of white and silver, encrusting my lashes until I have to rub my eyes or blink hard to keep my vision clear." — Katie Ives Alpinist Magazine, Issue 77, "Of Thin Ice"
"I've seen deep-green moss and delicate alpine plants glow emerald, burgundy and gold beneath a spume of translucent ice—safely beneath the reach of my sharp axe and crampon points—like miniature worlds of living things preserved in giant drops of amber or globes of glass." — Katie Ives Alpinist Magazine, Issue 77, "Of Thin Ice"
"The freedom to do as we choose is essential to the nature and history of climbing—those who can do, do. That involves the burden of personal responsibility, and is a tremendous part of what we love about climbing. Whether or not that freedom is sustainable in this day and age is another question. … Since we are left to our own devices with the freedom of climbing, what do our actions say about us?" — Kelly Cordes The Tower: A Chronicle of Climbing and Controversy on Cerro Torre
"The mountains do not exist for our amusement. They owe us nothing, and they ask nothing of us." — The Freedom of the Hills
"Keep close to Nature’s heart, yourself; and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean." — John Muir via Samuel Hall Young Alaska Days With John Muir
"As complex as the brain is, the world is more so. The brain cannot process and organize all the data that arrive. It cannot come up with a reasonable course of action if everything is given equal weight and perceived at equal intensity. That is the difficulty with logic: It’s step-by-step, linear. The world is not." — Laurence Gonzales Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
"The trap lay in the fact that they were only halfway to their real goal. They were celebrating when they had the worst part of the climb ahead of them. Climbers are the only sportsmen who do that. Moreover, it is part of the natural cycle of human emotion to let down your guard once you feel you’ve reached a goal." — Laurence Gonzales Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
"To the brain, the future is as real as the past. The difficulty begins when reality doesn’t match the plan. In nature, adaptation is important; the plan is not. It’s a Zen thing. We must plan. But we must be able to let go of the plan, too. Under the influence of a plan, it’s easy to see what we want to see." — Laurence Gonzales Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
"Fear puts me in my place. It gives me the humility to see things as they are." — Laurence Gonzales Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
"In a true survival situation, you are by definition looking death in the face, and if you can’t find something droll and even something wondrous and inspiring in it, you are already in a world of hurt." — Laurence Gonzales Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
"The first rule is: Face reality. Good survivors aren’t immune to fear. They know what’s happening, and it does 'scare the living shit out of' them. It’s all a question of what you do next." — Laurence Gonzales Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
"In this new social media era, the portrayal of women in the backcountry has taken a turn for the fabricated. Instagram users have likely seen the emerging trend of imagery of perfectly coifed women in fashion outdoor wear staring out at beautiful landscapes. These hyper-curated photos saturate Instagram feeds, and this phenomenon is beginning to have a hand in shaping the portrayal of women in outdoor adventure. The rise of this trend has shifted the focus to the aesthetics of the shot rather than the endeavor itself, let alone the skills required for it. One of the big questions centers on the message this category of outdoor portrayals sends to women about what the focus of backcountry adventures 'should' be. In this age of the social media-ization of adventure lifestyles, the line is more blurred than ever about what’s realistic and what’s not." — Guest Editor Misadventures Magazine, "The Reality of Women's Sports According to Instagram"
