You can’t coach desire, and no matter how fancy your training plan or how high your stated goals are, it comes down to getting out the door and doing the work day after day.

Climbers are a universal tribe: we share the knowledge that things are not important. Experience is important. Feeling is important.

In the mountains, fatigue is the biggest controllable limitation that will come between you and success.

You can’t coach desire, and no matter how fancy your training plan or how high your stated goals are, it comes down to getting out the door and doing the work day after day.

The simpler we make things, the richer the experiences become.

I can respect the gulf that separates alpinism from a running race and still appreciate that the physiology that accounts for endurance is the same if you are running a foot race in the city park or front pointing up the second ice field on the north face of the Eiger.

Historically, many of the great names in alpine climbing seemed to have just gone climbing as training. In fact, the model alpinist has often portrayed himself in literature as a half-crazed nonconformist, living life on the edge every moment he's sober enough to climb. It is true that amazing feats of skill and daring have been accomplished using this rather random approach. For some climbers that "life on the edge" approach may be the only way they can accomplish these feats, but there are far better methods to prepare for the challenges of alpine climbing.