Ed Viesturs > Quotes

“Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.”
― Ed Viesturs, No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks

“Mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.”
― Ed Viesturs, No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks

“Dreams are not made to put us to sleep, but to awaken us.”
― Ed Viesturs, No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks

“I believe that, with anything in life, if you have the patience, desire and passion, you can do whatever you set your mind to.”
― Ed Viesturs

“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.”
― Ed Viesturs, K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain

“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.”
― Ed Viesturs, No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks

“Getting to the top is optional, getting back down is mandatory. A lot of people forget about that.”
― Ed Viesturs

“That’s leadership: lead by example, lead from the front, inspire people to follow your lead.”
― Ed Viesturs, K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain

“Every person has his or her own Annapurna.” I go on to explain that there were many Annapurnas in my life—challenges I wasn’t sure I could meet—but that “the real Annapurna was my last one.” For each of you out there, your Annapurna might be a tough project at work, a bad illness, or the breakup of a marriage, but the trick is to find a way of converting adversity into something positive, a challenge to look forward to.”
― Ed Viesturs, No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks

“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.”
― Ed Viesturs, No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks

“Your instincts are telling you something. Trust them and listen to them.”
― Ed Viesturs, No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks

“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.” Some”
― Ed Viesturs, No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks

“Safety is first; fun is second; success is third.”
― Ed Viesturs, No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks

“The famous last line of Herzog’s book is “There are other Annapurnas in the lives of men.”
― Ed Viesturs, No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks

“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.”
― Ed Viesturs, K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain

“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.”
― Ed Viesturs, K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain

“After two hours of the hardest”
― Ed Viesturs, K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain

“A great climb is a wonderful mixture of difficulty and intimacy.”
― Ed Viesturs, No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks

“if you’re passionate about something and self-motivated, those are the key ingredients.”
― Ed Viesturs

“Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.”
― Ed Viesturs, No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks

“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.”
― Ed Viesturs, K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain

“We stopped in our tracks. I said, “Man, let’s not get ourselves killed doing this. Let’s discuss this.” Scott sat down facing out, looking down at me. I figured, if a big spindrift slide comes down now, we’re going to get washed off the face.”
― Ed Viesturs, No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks

“By now, a significant portion of the whole Sherpa economy depends on the spring and fall seasons on Everest.”
― Ed Viesturs, K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain

“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.”
― Ed Viesturs, No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks

“Viewed as a whole, climbing all fourteen 8,000ers would have seemed almost impossible, but I took it one day at a time, one step at a time. I was passionate about what I did, and I never gave up. “Whatever challenge you have before you can be accomplished in the same fashion—whether it takes a week, two months, or a year. If you look at the challenge as a whole, it may seem insuperable, but if you break it down into tangible steps, it can seem more reasonable, and ultimately achievable.” The model for that strategy comes from the way I learned to break up the “impossible” 4,000-foot climb to a summit into tiny, manageable pieces: just get to that rock outcrop there, then focus on the ice block up ahead, and so on. For”
― Ed Viesturs, No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks

“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.”
― Ed Viesturs, K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain

“Mount McKinley,”
― Ed Viesturs, K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain

“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.”
― Ed Viesturs, K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain

“I’ll go even further and say that competitiveness in mountaineering is wrong. It’s dangerous. Climbing should be personally motivated.”
― Ed Viesturs, No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks

“Once you achieve a certain level of success, no matter where you are, what you’re doing, don’t be content with that level.

Push yourself to another level. People that are successful are always pushing.”
― Ed Viesturs