Ninety per cent of the tourists climbing big mountains are on 10 mountains - and one million mountains in the world are empty.
Interpretation
Most tourists flock to the same popular mountains, leaving countless others unexplored.
Reinhold Messner's quote underscores the phenomenon of mass tourism where a large majority of adventurers choose to visit a few well-known peaks, while the vast majority of mountains remain untouched and undiscovered. This illustrates not only the appeal of popularity but also the missed opportunities for unique experiences in less frequented locations, encouraging individuals to explore beyond the crowded choices.
In practice
A travel blogger can use this quote to encourage readers to explore lesser-known destinations.
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.
Part of the reasons I have lived the life I have is because I wanted to have an adventurous life. But my best adventures are more literary than political.
The old wanderlust had gotten into his blood, the joy of the unbound life, the joy of seeking, of hoping without limit.
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.
Fare well we call to hearth and hall Though wind may blow and rain may fall We must away ere break of day Over the wood and mountain tall To Rivendell where Elves yet dwell In glades beneath the misty fell Through moor and waste we ride in haste And wither then we cannot tell With foes ahead behind us dread Beneath the sky shall be our bed Until at last our toil be sped Our journey done, our errand sped We must away! We must away! We ride before the break of day!
The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.
True adventure begins when everything goes wrong.
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