Sunday 14 August 2011

Left for Dead

Some of my favourite quotes from Beck Weathers' account of the infamous 1996 Mount Everest disaster, in his book Left For Dead:

"Our pace was that slow, rhythmic, metronome-like gait ingrained in the frame of my being through years of climbing."  -p37

"You travel in a private bubble of light from your headlamp, the rest of the world as lost to you as if you were alone on the face of the moon." -p38

"In that moment, by saving those three people who otherwise surely would have died, Anatoli Boukreev became a hero.  Let that be the way Anatoli is remembered."  -p52

"Both of them knew exactly what lay ahead.  When those moments had passed and Rob no longer had to be strong, you could hear him quietly weeping as he faced his own death.  He didn't know the radio was still on." -p57

"You cannot sweat that small stuff, I said to myself.  You have to focus on that which must be done, and do that thing." -p62

"The three of them - David, Ed and Robert - are elite mountaineers, among the most famous and accomplished mountain climbers in the world.  It wasn't lost on me that I, the ultimate grunt at the end of his climbing career, suddenly was surrounded by a dream team of mountaineering.  Another of life's little ironies."  -p71

"I know a man who believes he has a brave heart, but he's never been sufficiently challenged to know if this is true.  I will ask him."  -p74

"Madan is to me the most extraordinary person in this story, because he didn't know me at all. He didn't know my family, and he has his own family, for which he is the sole provider. We were separated by language, by culture, by religion, by the entire breadth of this world, but bound together by a bond of common humanity." -p81

"I felt compelled to go to him.  I didn't care where he was.  I didn't really know where I was going, or how I would get there.  But I figured I was going to find him."  -p96

"At no point had this been a pretty or even interesting climb, but when we finally reached the Canelleta, I understood why Trevanian so fiercely loathes Aconcagua.  The Canelleta may be the most miserable natural incline on Earth.  You can't go up it quickly, because you can't get enough breath.  But if you go too slowly it slides out from under you."  -p242

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