Status Updates From Everest: From Reconnaissanc...

"the highest of mountains is capable of severity, a severity so awful and so fatal that the wiser sort of men do well to think and tremble even on the threshold of their high endeavour."
- Mallory

"He would have walked on, even to his end, because for him as for all of his generation death was but 'a frail barrier' that men crossed, 'smiling and gallant, every day'. They had seen so much of death that life mattered less than the moments of being alive."

"There was in fact a growing divide between those who still considered climbing to be a sport of gentlemen, and a new generation who played in an altogether different league. The former used the language of war to describe their efforts and intentions on a mountain; the latter had lived through a war that allowed them to walk with grace and commitment at the very edge of death."