quotes

Ski quotes can be inspiring, witty, comical, serious, observant, or impart much life wisdom, amongst other traits. Here I’ve gathered a bunch of favorite quotes on skiing and the mountains. They’ve been attributed when I knew the source. Others, either anonymous or from an unknown source, have no attribution. Enjoy!

 

“Some mountaineers are proud of having done all their climbs without bivouac. How much they have missed! And the same applies to those who enjoy only rock climbing, or only the ice climbs, only the ridges or faces. We should refuse none of the thousand and one joys that the mountains offer us at every turn. We should brush nothing aside, set no restrictions. We should experience hunger and thirst, be able to go fast, but also to go slowly and to contemplate.” Gaston Rebuffat

“If the conquest of a great peak brings moments of exultation and bliss, which in the monotonous, materialistic existence of modern times nothing else can approach, it also presents great dangers. It is not the goal of ‘grand alpinisme’ to face peril, but it is one of the tests one must undergo to deserve the joy of rising for an instant above the state of crawling grubs.” Lionel Terray 1965, in his account of the first ascent of Alaska’s Mt. Huntington

“I believe that the ascent of mountains forms an essential chapter in the complete duty of man, and that it is wrong to leave any district without setting foot on its highest peak.” Sir Leslie Stephen

“I might die climbing. You might, too. We can make efforts to minimize the risks, but ultimately we either accept the possibility of dying on a mountain, fool ourselves that the possibility doesn’t exist – or we quit.” Colin Haley

“Consider what you want to do in relation to what you are capable of doing. Climbing is, above all, a matter of integrity.” Gaston Rebuffat

“Skiing is a beautiful way to travel in alpine terrain. It allows effortless speed & grace over what would otherwise be scarcely navigable terrain. I am continually amazed and always grateful that this crazy sport exists.” Arne Backstrom

“It is better to go skiing and think of God, than go to church and think of sport.” Fridtjof Nansen

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“On the one hand, you have in your mind, you have to move fast. But on the other, you know exactly, if I do a mistake, I fall off.” Ueli Steck

GRAVITY – It’s not just a good idea. It’s the law.

“Whatever degree of skill a skier may possess, he should never forget that his skis are after all only an instrument, a means through which he can enjoy the winter in all its glory and ruggedness, can breathe clean fresh air, can meet human beings in their true character, and can forget all the petty troubles which beset our so-called civilization. These are a few of the reasons why skiing is not merely a sport – it is a way of life.” Otto Schniebs, 1936

“The way to my heart is to call me a ski honey instead of a ski bunny.” Alicia Stephenson

“Over time, most people experience life involving love, suffering, compassion and an unspeakable drive for something new…for me there’s skiing, nothing more nothing less, and it encompasses everything, every day I’m out there.” Pep Fujas

“Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve. They are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.” Anotoli Boukreev

Alta = A Lot of Traversing Around.

“Remember, if you don’t do it this year, you’ll be one year older when you do.” Warren Miller

“Faster, faster, ’til the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death.” (Used frequently in beginners lessons!)

“We need to travel (ski?). If we don’t offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don’t lift to the horizon; our ears don’t hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience, and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days. Don’t let yourself become one of these people. The fear of the unknown and the lure of the comfortable will conspire to keep you from taking the chances the traveler (skier?) has to take. But if you take them, you will never regret your choice. To be sure, there will be moments of doubt when you stand alone on an empty road in an icy rain, or when you are ill with fever in a rented bed. But as the pains of the moment will come, so too will they fall away. In the end, you will be so much richer, so much stronger, so much clearer, so much happier, and so much a better person that all the risk and hardship will seem like nothing compared to the knowledge you have gained.” Kent Nerburn

“The way to ski these things is to go to total panic, then back off.”

“Mountains have a way of dealing with overconfidence.” Hermann Buhl

“Rise early. Fix a time-table to which you must try to keep. One seldom regrets having made an early start, but one always regrets having set off too late; first for reasons of safety – the adage ‘it is later than you think’ is very true in the mountains – but also because of the strange beauty of the moment: the day comes to replace the night, the peaks gradually lighten, it is the hour of mystery but also of hope. Setting off by lantern-light, witnessing the birth of a new day as one climbs to meet the sun, this is a wonderful experience.” Gaston Rebuffat, from On Snow and Rock, 1959

“Powder snow skiing is not fun. It’s life, fully lived, life lived in a blaze of reality.” Dolores LaChapelle

“…The sensual caress of waist deep cold smoke … Glory in skiing virgin snow, in being the first to mark the powder with the signature of their run.” Tim Cahill

“Fear… the right and necessary counterweights to that courage which urges men skyward, and protects them from self-destruction.” Heinrich Harrer

“A clever skier will often find an oasis of good snow while the rest of the party … within a few yards of him … are struggling with crust.” Sir Arnold Lunn

“Skiing is a dance, and the mountain always leads.”

“The true skier does not follow where others lead. He is not confined to a piste. He is an artist who creates a pattern of lovely lines from virgin and uncorrupted snow. What marble is to the sculptor, so are the latent harmonies of ridge and hollow, powder, and sun-softened crust to the true skier. By a wise dispensation of providence, the snow, whose beauty has been defaced and destroyed by the multitude of piste addicts, does not record the passage of the ‘lifted skier.’ It is only soft snow that records the movements of individual skiers, and it is only in soft snow that the real artist can express himself.” Sir Arnold Lunn

“I think my favorite sport in the Olympics is the one in which you make your way through the snow, you stop, you shoot a gun, and then you continue on.  In most of the world, it is known as the biathlon, except in New York City, where it is known as winter.” Michael Ventre, L.A. Daily News

“Challenging snow is one of my favorite kinds of skiing, and I like being able to switch techniques at liberty.” Paul Parker

“For me, skiing is a physical necessity. I have a need for risk.” Jean-Marie Messier

“I don’t know if it’s just me or everyone, but the whole vibe with skiing is not so much thriving on competition against others as it is against myself and the clock.” Picabo Street

“I don’t want a cheaper lift ticket. I want an expensive lift ticket that costs less.” Warren Miller

“I’m looking forward to free skiing the most. Just groomers, big wide groomers making nice big turns.” Picabo Street

“Skiing is the pleasurable part of alpinism – way more pleasurable and fun than alpine climbing.” Michael Kennedy

“Talking from morning to night about sex has helped my skiing, because I talk about movement, about looking good, about taking risks.” Ruth Westheimer

“That feeling is the same whether you’re on either side of the hundredths. Obviously, it’s great to win the world championship, but if you put down that kind of skiing, it’s awesome either way.” Bode Miller

“We can’t control what the ratings will be. It’s like, if you’re going to go skiing, do you hope you’ll have a good day of skiing? Yes. Do you hope you won’t break your leg? Yes.” David Hyde Pierce

“The mountains will always be there, the trick is to make sure you are too.” Hervey Voge

“Together we knew toil, joy and pain. My fervent wish is that the nine of us who were united in face of death should remain fraternally united through life.” Maurice Herzog, Annapurna 1950

“Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.” Evan Hardin

“There are only 4 things you can do on skis. Turn right, turn left, go straight, or sell them.” Warren Miller

“In the mountains there are only two grades: You can either do it, or you can’t.” Rusty Baille

“It’s a round trip. Getting to the summit is optional, getting down is mandatory.” Ed Viesturs

“I don’t like bungee jumping, but I do like skiing.” Roger Moore

“Mountains are not fair or unfair, they are just dangerous.” Reinhold Messner

“Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the mystery of why we climb.” Greg Child

“It’s not advisable to drink too much strong liquor while climbing in the Alps. If, however, you are going to fall over a cliff, it’s advisable to be thoroughly intoxicated when you do so.” English alpinist

“When it comes to skiing, there’s a difference between what you think it’s going to be like, what it’s really like, and what you tell your friends it was like.” Warren Miller

“Life is brought down to the basics: if you are warm, regular, healthy, not thirsty or hungry, then you are not on a mountain. . . . Climbing at altitude is like hitting your head against a brick wall – it’s great when you stop.” Chris Darwin, The Social Climbers

“How could the adventure seeker of today find satisfaction with the level of performance that was a standard set more than 40 years ago?” Anatoli Boukreev

“MEN WANTED… For Hazardous Journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success…” Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 Ad

“You cannot stay on the mountain forever. You have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.” Rene Daumel, Mont Analogue

“But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he cannot learn, feel, change, grow, or live. Chained by his servitude he is a slave who has forfeited all freedom. Only a person who risks is free. The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; and the realist adjusts the sails.” William Arthur Ward

“Yeah. Get pissed. DESTROY. Oh, and get a mouth guard to save the teeth on the big hits.” Seth Morrison, in response to: “Any advice for the kids?”

“Humiliated and disgusted at how badly I skied … those long, clumsy hickory skis. If wood were the best material, they’d still be making airplanes out of wood.” Howard Head, pioneer of modern ski manufacturing

“There are two types of skis. Rock skis and skis yet to be mounted.”

“Mad River Glen, either you arrive with rock skis or you leave with them.”

“Growing up and skiing southern Vermont is like growing up and playing basketball in the hood. The mentality is tough, everybody takes the game seriously and you learn to make the best of what you’ve got.” Freeskier Magazine

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.” T.S. Eliot

“In the summer, chairlifts are just a bunch of people movers to nowhere.”

“On this proud and beautiful mountain we have lived hours of fraternal, warm and exalting nobility. Here for a few days we have ceased to be slaves and have really been men. It is hard to return to servitude.” Lionel Terray

“To those who have struggled with them, the mountains reveal beauties that they will not disclose to those who make no effort. That is the reward the mountains give to effort. And it is because they have so much to give and give it so lavishly to those who will wrestle with them that men love the mountains and go back to them again and again. The mountains reserve their choice gifts for those who stand upon their summits.” Sir Francis Younghusband

“Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are naught without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste, look well to each step, and from the beginning think what may be the end.” Edward Whymper

“When I started to sing, my mother would have me engaged to perform at the Women’s Christian Temperance Union national or annual meetings. I would hate doing this because I wanted to play baseball or go off skiing.” Maureen Forrester

“To the sober person adventurous conduct often seems insanity.” Georg Simmel

“Climbing is the lazy man’s way to enlightenment. It forces you to pay attention, because if you don’t, you won’t succeed, which is minor — or you may get hurt, which is major. Instead of years of meditation, you have this activity that forces you to relax and monitor your breathing and tread that line between living and dying. When you climb, you always are confronted with the edge. Hey, if it was just like climbing a ladder, we all would have quit a long time ago.” Duncan Ferguson

“Snowboarding is an activity that is very popular with people who do not feel that regular skiing is lethal enough. I now realize that the small hills you see on ski slopes are formed around the bodies of forty-seven-year-olds who tried to learn snowboarding.” Dave Barry

“Kids today, all they talk about is big air. I say, stay on the mountain, that’s where the action is. If you want big air, pull my finger.” Smooth Johnson

“If you aren’t crashing, you aren’t skiing.”

“The ski bum trades security for face shots, the future for the moment.  Considering how hollow the promise of a corporate career has become, who can say the ski bum is not the wiser investor in his or her youth?”

“Joy is the response of a lover receiving what he loves. This is the joy we feel when skiing powder… This overflowing gratitude is what produces the absolutely stupid, silly grins that we always flash at one another at the bottom of a powder run. We all agree that we never see these grins anywhere else in life.” Delores LaChapelle

“Turn right, turn left, repeat as necessary.”

“Snow: a form of precipitation that usually occurs three weeks prior to and the morning of your departure from your ski vacation.”

“Traverse: One of two ways to stop while skiing. Tree: The other method.”

“Gravity is love and every turn is a leap of faith.”

“Skiing:  the art of catching cold and going broke while rapidly heading nowhere at great personal risk.”

“The sport of skiing consists of wearing three thousand dollars’ worth of clothes and equipment and driving two hundred miles in the snow in order to stand around at a bar and get drunk.” P.J. O’Rourke, Modern Manners, 1984

“There are really only three things to learn in skiing:  how to put on your skis, how to slide downhill, and how to walk along the hospital corridor.” Lord Mancroft, A Chinaman in the Bath, 1974

“Stretch pants – the garment that made skiing a spectator sport.”

“One cannot climb at all unless he has sufficient urge to do so. Danger must be met (indeed it must be used) to an extent beyond that incurred to normal life. That is one reason men climb; for only in response to challenge does one man become his best.” Ax Nelson

“Do not burn yourself out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast, a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So get out there and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains. Run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to your body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those deskbound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards.” Edward Abbey

“Each fresh peak ascended teaches something.” Sir Martin Convay

“All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night, in the dusty recesses of their minds, awake in the day to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes to make it reality.” T.E. Lawrence

“Hours slide by like minutes. The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence – the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes – all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose by the seriousness of the task at hand.” Jon Krakauer

“Adventure is just bad planning.”  Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen.

“To put yourself into a situation where a mistake cannot necessarily be recouped, where the life you lose may be your own, clears the head wonderfully. It puts domestic problems back into proportion and adds an element of seriousness to your drab, routine life. Perhaps this is one reason why climbing (skiing) has become increasingly hard as society has become increasingly, disproportionately, coddling.” Al Alvarez

“A man does not climb a mountain without bringing some of it away with him and leaving something of himself upon it.”  Martin Conway

“I suggest going out to the nearest pub and getting completely and utterly wasted. Make sure you smoke at least 1 pack of unfiltered Camel’s. Get the full ashtray, pour a drink in it and then pour the mixture into a water bottle. When you get home (ideally around 3:30am) stick the vile mixture into your freezer. Put on your best goretex and thermal layer. Climb in. At 5:30am, get out, drink (chew?) the mixture and go run the biggest flight of stairs you can find. Run until your heart threatens to explode. Your dehydration caused by the alcohol should adequately simulate what you may experience at higher altitudes. Your lung capacity should be sufficiently impaired by the smokes to simulate an oxygen poor environment. The freezer episode should adequately replicate a bivy. Drinking the booze/butt mixture should simulate your lack of appetite… Oh – once you’ve finished your workout, go to work (to replicate the long walk out).” Greg Hamilton suggesting the feeling of climbing at altitude

“I climb because it feels so good when I stop.”

“I haven’t done anything that anyone else couldn’t have done. I just did it.” Norman Vaughan

“Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, since to remain constantly at work will cause you to lose power of judgment. Go some distance away because a lack of harmony or proportion is more readily seen.” Leonardo da Vinci

“In the end, to ski is to travel fast and free – free over untouched snow country. To be bound to one slope, even one mountain, by a lift may be convenient but it robs us of the greatest pleasure that skiing can give, that is to travel through the wide wintery country; to follow the lure of peaks which tempt on the horizon and to be alone for a few days or even hours in clear, mysterious surroundings.” Hans Gmoser

“Ski weird when you’re young so when you get old people won’t think you’re crazy.” Warren Miller

“Some people can never learn to ski powder snow without exerting tremendous effort and strength because they allow their rational, left-brain hemisphere to control the entire situation.” Delores LaChapelle

“Live to ski.” Steve Romeo

“The best climber in the world is the one who’s having the most fun.” Alex Lowe

“The mountains will always be there, the trick is to make sure you are, too.” Hervey Voge

“Doubly happy, however, is the man to whom lofty mountain tops are within reach.” John Muir

“You never climb the same mountain twice, not even in memory. Memory rebuilds the mountain, changes the weather, retells the jokes, remakes all the moves.” Lito Tejada-Flores

“The aim of the mountaineer, if he wishes to be an artist in the full sense of the word, is neither escape nor ‘the search for the absolute’ as some have claimed, but rather to seek that place where “the mystic remains silent, and the poets start to speak towards men.” Bernard Amy