UKC

Taken from the White Spider;

'I believe no man can be completely able to summon all his strength, all his will, all his energy
for the last desperate move, till he is convinced that the last bridge is down behind him and that there is nowhere to go to go but on'.

There are more in this book but this is just the latest I've come across.

Any more?

In reply to greylag:

There's a poem by Geoffrey Winthrop Young, that contains the lines:

"Then they piled rocks and boulders mountain high, with stairs of snow up to Orion's door.

And climbed together singing to the sky; and no one saw them go."

I'd like that on my tombstone.

In reply to greylag:

Loads - for instance:

'We so far forgot ourselves as to shake hands.' FA Nanda Devi.

Apropos of grit, 'The moves are so easy... it's just making them that's so hard.'

And lots more.

Mick

In reply to greylag:

"as slippery as snakes' snot...."
- Barry Blanchard

In reply to greylag:

Ed Whympers final quote from Scrambles amongst the Alps.
"Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step and from the beginning think what may be the end."

In reply to greylag:

"Remember the mountain will always be there. The trick is to make sure you are too"

Don Whillans

"Definition of the psychological belay - a female second"

Tom Patey

Sexist?

In reply to greylag:

"We knocked the bastard off"

Ed Hillary on returning to the South Col after the first ascent of Everest

In reply to greylag:


The best training was to go to the pub, drink 5 quarts of beer, and talk about climbing

— Ron Fawcett.

In reply to
If you take another picture like that I'll thump you.
Pete Boardman to Joe Tasker while he was struggling up a jumar pitch on Changabang.

In reply to greylag:

"14 stone of Fighting Flab"; Don will as being filmed climbing cemetery gates with Joe Brown.

In reply to greylag: ' it goes, boys.". Lynn Hillingdon the first ever free ascent of The Nose

In reply to greylag:

"It has frequently been noticed that all mountains appear doomed to pass through the three stages: An inaccessible peak - The most difficult ascent in the Alps - An easy day for a lady."
— A F Mummery, My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus

In reply to pebbles:


Come again? You absolutely sure you got the name correct? Good quote anyway!

In reply to greylag:

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/climbing

In reply to greylag:

"There are other Annapurnas in the lives of men" - Maurice Herzog

A bit bitchy given how he has been carried by others in his life, but still nice out of context.

"The ascent of any route begins, in dreams at least, the autumn before. Our minds ring, involuntarily, with the alluring names of mountains, aiguilles, faces and ridges. Is it the name itself which is so tempting, or the picture we have of the mountain itself, or does the appeal come from our feeling of the actual process of climbing?" - Gaston Rébuffat

In reply to Willi Crater: nope, blame the %&*%& autocomplete on my mobile, which i didnt notice when posting!!!!!! it was of course Lynn Hill

In reply to Fredt:

hmm Fred T, I bet you are Fred of the Pinny Club and I claim my £5!!!!!

In reply to greylag:

Question asked of Joe Brown - "You're quite short, how do you reach the holds?"
Joe: "I climb up to them".

Dave

. In reply to pebbles:


Ha ha - kind of thought that would be the case. Damn thing changed prussic to Prussians on a recent post of mine.

In reply to greylag:

"Everything around me, motionless and still, was unaware. And so I instinctively asked again: “Why?”. There was no answer and maybe never there will be one.”

Giusto Gervasutti

In reply to greylag:

I also love this, from Eric Shipton about Bill Tilman, largely because there are people with whom I have pretty much the same relationship:

'How I hated Tilman in the early morning. Not only on that expedition, but on all the years we have been together. He never slept like an ordinary person. Whatever time we agreed to awake, long before (how long I never knew) he would slide from his sleeping bag and start stirring his silly porridge over the Primus stove. I used gradually to become aware of this irritating noise and would bury my head in silent rage against the preposterous injustice of being woken half an hour too soon. When his filthy brew was ready he would say 'Show a leg,' or some such imbecile remark. In moments of triumph on top of a peak I have gone so far as to admit that our presence there was due in large measure to this quality of Tilman's, but in the dark hours before dawn such a admission of virtue in my companion has never touched the fringe of my consciousness.'

In reply to Ramblin dave:

Here's two; Mummery:

Happily for us, the great brown slabs bending over into immeasurable space, the lines and curves of the wind-moulded cornices, the delicate undulations of fissured snow, are old and trusted friends, ever luring us to fun and laughter and enabling us to bid a sturdy defiance to all the ills that time and life oppose.

and John Muir:

Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grasses and gentians of glacial meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of nature's darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings, Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but nature's sources never fail

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

The second one of those reminds me a lot of Thoreau:
"Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures. Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played."

In reply to greylag:

I always liked that photo caption in 'Rock Climbing in Action in Snowdonia': 'I had this dream, see, and I was falling upwards in a shaft of light.'

In reply to Willi Crater:


Did it also change prusik to prussic?

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:



Yes it did! I noticed at the time but elected to leave it in the expectation that someone would pick up on it. Since we are doing quotes "I wondered if you would be the first to spot that Jamie".

In reply to greylag:

Bill Tilman once wrote that when planning an expedition it's too complex "if you can't plan the whole thing on the back of a cigarette packet"

In reply to greylag:

My favourite quote about climbing in a novel is from Island by Aldous Huxley. It's accurate for me, maybe too flowery for some:

"Danger deliberately and yet lightly accepted. Danger shared with a friend, a group of friends. Shared consciously, shared to the limits of awareness so that the sharing and the danger become a yoga. Two friends roped together on a rock face. Sometimes three friends or four. Each totally aware of his own straining muscles, his own skill, his own fear, and his own spirit transcending the fear. And each, of course, aware at the same time of all the others, concerned for them, doing the right things to make sure that they'll be safe. Life at its highest pitch of bodily and mental tension, life more abundant, more inestimably precious, because of the ever-present threat of death. But after the yoga of danger there's the yoga of the summit, the yoga of rest and letting go, the yoga of complete and total receptiveness, the yoga that consists in consciously accepting what is given as it is given, without censorship by your busy moralistic mind, without any additions from your stock of secondhand ideals, your even larger stock of wishful phantasies. You just sit there with muscles relaxed and a mind open to the sunlight and the clouds, open to distance and the horizon, open in the end to that formless, wordless Not-Thought which the stillness of the summit permits you to divine, profound and enduring, within the twittering flux of your everyday thinking."

In reply to greylag:

"Cos it's there, innit?"

In reply to greylag:

There are three I also like, but am not sure of the exact wording, nor even of the author. Perhaps someone will correct and supplement
1. "Come on Madam Mummery, I could hold a cow from here". It was I think the Zermatt guide A Burgener
2. "It may go, but I won't" I think a propos the Viereselgrat of the Dent Blanche
3. "The human animal was far from happy" Rébuffat ??

In reply to jcw:


Hi John,

Rébuffat, on the Badile, I think. From (my iffy) memory, in English, 'The human animal was not content' but, of course, things may have changed a little in translation. Isn't there a photo of him (in Starlight and Storm?) looking pretty wrecked after a particularly dire bivvy? It seemed strikingly at odds with all those other photos of him perfectly turned out, practically a crease in his breeches.

The Badile photo showed the real hard-core Alpinist in extremis. When everything goes against you, it's the acid test: what do you do then?

Mick

In reply to greylag:
Definitely need some WH Murray. In the absence of the books a quick paste will have to do:
"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation. There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too."

Kind of meshes nicely with the White Spider quote at the top.

In reply to Mick Ward:

Uber pedant alert - actually I'm pretty sure it's a quote from the White Spider describing the early international ascent of the Eiger led by Buhl, which may be one of the most masterly pieces of understatement of all time. He's half way up the most dangerous face in Europe, attached at one end to cr*p belays in loose rock and the other to a fanatical Austrian madman who is insisting on leading the wet, compact limestone throughout despite taking monster falls, there's a freaking blizzard and he's wearing a cotton shirt, a fashion knit jumper and a 4oz cagoule with rips in it ... and he's NOT HAPPY???!!

In reply to greylag:

I may be mixing things up terribly but.....

" To go on was impossible: to retreat was unthinkable." From The Ascent of Rum Doodle??

In reply to greylag:

Here's a good quote from a Gaston Rebuffat book Starlight and Storm.

In this modern age, very little remains that is real. Night has been banished, so have the cold, the wind and the stars. They have all been neutralized: the rhythm of life itself is obscured. Everything goes so fast and makes so much noise, and men hurry by without heeding the grass by the roadside, its colour, its smell and the way it shimmers when the wind caresses it. What a strange encounter then is that between man and the high places of his planet! Up there he is surrounded by the silence of forgetfulness. If there is a slope of snow steep as a glass window, he climbs it, leaving behind him a strange trail. If there is a rock perfect as an obelisk, he defies gravity and proves that he can get up anywhere.

In reply to Trangia:



What about "and then I 'it 'im!"

In reply to Mick Ward:

Yes I'm sure it's that. I haven't access to the book at present, but I thought it might well be that second Badile ascent.Thanks

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:


Some folk are never satisfied! I've got a feeling you're right (and thereby stand corrected; dodgy memory indeed). I've probably conflated Gaston on the Eiger (not too happy) with Gaston on the Badile (not too happy either).

More importantly... Buhl on the Eiger has always seemed one of the greatest displays of guts ever. The hardest alpine route in the world, in the worst conditions, his comeback after a year's marriage. I remember reading the different accounts: his (ghostwritten; I didn't know then) pretty matter of fact; the French ones pretty grudging; but the Austrian ones seemed to tell the whole story with searing honesty. Those two brothers amazed that he wasn't leaving them behind; his mate stunned at his ability, yet horrified at the effort he was putting in towards the end.

You feel that if Buhl had failed they'd have all died. Fortunately he didn't.

Mick

In reply to jcw:

Hi John, our posts have crossed. I'm not sure myself now! Clearly he was made of the right stuff...

mick

In reply to greylag:
"This isn't climbing - it is ascending" Quote by my mate Roger having frigged his way 50 ft up Antiworlds on Lundy "Lets go and climb something instead". We did Serpent in rather better style. Not in any book but it stayed with me for years.

In reply to Ramblin dave:

One of my fave's that one!