Juli Roffman

“Think of it as a blind date. All you initially have
in common at the bottom is the reason you’re there, the top of the mountain.”
― Anatoli Boukreev, The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest

“as had been the situation on other commercial expeditions, I had been hired to prepare the mountain for the people instead of the other way around.”
― Anatoli Boukreev, The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest

“Mountains are different and unique from anything else you will face in life in that they are the truest, cleanest representative of life’s challenges in physical form. There is no mistaking the end goal, and there is no mistaking who got you there. You have to count on you, and your arrival at the summit is the simplest and most honest achievement for your soul that you can experience.”
― Matt Larson, 4000s by 40: Tackling Middle Age in the Mountains of New Hampshire

“But maybe, I thought, the price of climbing Everest is now being calculated in a different way. More and more people, it seems, are willing to pay a cash price for the opportunity, but not a physical price for preparedness: the gradual development of body and spirit as you climb lower-level peaks, moving from the simple to the complex and finally to the 8,000ers. Isn’t there accomplishment to be felt in such a process, I wondered, or has high-altitude climbing forever been changed by the use of oxygen, advances in technologies, and the proliferation of services that allow the marginally prepared to climb higher and higher?”
― Anatoli Boukreev, The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest