The best climbers no longer go to the 8000ers, but to the most difficult mountains in the world which are 6000 or 7000-meter-peaks. There they find any kind of playground. But it is a pity that the really good climbers have fewer opportunities to finance their expeditions because so much attention is taken away by the Everest tourists.
Interpretation
True skill is often found in tackling challenges that are less recognized but more difficult.
Reinhold Messner's quote emphasizes that the most accomplished climbers focus on the challenging peaks of lower altitudes rather than the popular and commercialized heights like Everest. It highlights the idea that real ability and passion may go unnoticed in a culture that glorifies the more accessible, yet less demanding, achievements in climbing, suggesting that true adventure lies in the pursuit of difficult and lesser-known challenges.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a motivational speech at an adventure sports event.
I became famous for the fact that I would break many, many limits. People said, 'He does all these crazy things.' But oddly it was a crazy thing only because scientists and climbers said, 'Everest and the 8,000-meter peaks without oxygen - impossible. Messner is becoming sick in his head.'
A 30-year-old rock climber is an old man. At 40, one is in the middle of his high-altitude power. At 50, a crosser of deserts is at his best age. But at 60, each of us is out of the game.
I think my cultural work is more important than the adventures I did. The adventures are not important for human beings. It's the conquering of the useless.
In mountaineering, there is not only the activity, but the philosophy behind it. Some say a moral, but I am against that because all morality is dangerous.
I was the first man to climb the world's 14 tallest peaks without supplementary oxygen, but I never asked how high I would go, just how I would do it.
In my state of spiritual abstraction, I no longer belong to myself and to my eyesight. I am nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung, floating over the mists and summits.
I have ever been prone to seek adventure and to investigate and experiment where wiser men would have left well enough alone.
Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble. It sounds swell when you write about it, but it's hell when you meet it face to face in a dark and lonely place.
I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky; and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.
We must always remember with gratitude and admiration the first sailors who steered their vessels through storms and mists, and increased our knowledge of the lands of ice in the South.
As a rule, anything that is pretty you avoid when on an expedition in the polar extremes. Normally anything other than white means a hazard such as a crevasse.
To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the most pleasant sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure.
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