Across
- 3. "We didn't know them. No, we didn't give them any water. We didn't talk to them. They had severe high-altitude sickness. They looked as if they were dangerous.... We were too tired to help. Above 8,000 meters is not a place where people can afford morality." Page 241
- 5. "With enough determination, any bloody idiot can get up this hill.... The trick is to get back down alive." Page 147
- 7. "The ratio of misery to pleasure was greater by an order of magnitude than any other mountain I'd been on; I quickly came to understand that climbing Everest was primarily about enduring pain. And in subjecting ourselves to week after week of toil, tedium, and suffering, it struck me that most of us were probably seeking, above all else, something like a state of grace." Page 136
- 8. "I'd always known that climbing mountains was a high-risk pursuit. I accepted that danger was an essential component of the game--without it, climbing would be little different from a hundred other trifling diversions. It was titillating to brush up against the enigma of mortality, to steal a glimpse across its forbidden frontier. Climbing was a magnificent activity, I firmly believed, not in spite of the inherent perils, but precisely because of them." Page 270
- 10. "I'd been fantasizing about this moment, and the release of emotion that would accompany it, for many months. But now that I was finally here, actually standing on the summit of Mt. Everest, I just couldn't summon the energy to care." Page 5
Down
- 1. "I believe 100 percent I'm coming back.... My wife believes 100 percent I'm coming back. She isn't concerned about me at all when I'm guiding because I'm gonna make all the right choices. When accidents happen, I think it's always human error." Page 65
- 2. "Having stumbled upon a tolerable career, for the first time on my life I was actually living above the poverty line. My hunger to climb had been blunted, in short, by a bunch of small satisfactions that added up to something like happiness." Page 25
- 4. "Safe now, the crushing strain of the preceding days lifted off my shoulders, I cried for my lost companions, I cried because I was grateful to be alive, I cried because I felt terrible for having survived while others had died." Page 267
- 6. "When it came time for each of us to assess our own abilities and weigh them against the formidable challenge of the world's highest mountain, it sometimes seemed as though half the population at Base Camp was clinically delusional. But perhaps this shouldn't have come as a surprise. Everest has always been magnet for kooks, hopeless romantics, and others with a shaky hold on reality." Page 88
- 9. "In this godforsaken place, I felt disconnected from the climbers around me--emotionally, spiritually, physically--to a degree I hadn't experienced on any previous expedition. We were a team in name only, I'd sadly come to realize. Although in a few hours we would leave camp as a group, we would ascend as individuals, linked to one another by neither rope nor any deep sense of loyalty." Page 163