Powder. It’s a drug. And like any other potentially addictive substance, it sucks up time, money and inclination, all of which eventually drain through a hole in your psyche. Seasons are squandered in its pursuit, lives are lost in its fury. It’s a silken seductress, to which having once fallen prey to those wiles, you will always return, but whose continuous promise of tumultuous crescendo is never quite realized – there can never, ever, be enough powder. Given that, there can never, ever, be enough said about an inanimate substance with the power to mold disciples and the cosmic ability to both transform and transfix. It’s a dimension. Powder.
Fear… the right and necessary counterweights to that courage which urges men skyward, and protects them from self-destruction. (Heinrich Harrer)
…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)
Powder snow skiing is not fun. It’s life, fully lived, life lived in a blaze of reality. (Dolores LaChapelle)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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 soft snow that the real artist can express himself. (Sir Arnold Lunn)
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)
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)
Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, since to remain constantly at work will cause you to lose power of judgement. Go some distance away because a lack of harmony or proportion is more readily seen. (Leonardo da Vinci)
Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. (St. Paul (Romans 5:3-4))
I haven’t done anything that anyone else couldn’t have done. I just did it. (Norman Vaughan)
I climb because it feels so good when I stop. (Unknown)
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 a oxygen poor environment. The freezer episode should adequately replicate a bivy. Drinking the booze/butt mixture should simulate your lack of appetite….. Oh — once your finished your workout, go to work (to replicate the long walk out).” (Greg Hamilton suggesting the feeling of climbing at altitude)
Mountains have a way of dealing with overconfidence. (Hermann Buhl)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings, Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds — and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there I’ve chased the shouting wind along and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air. Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace Where never lark, or even eagle flew. And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod The high, untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand, and touched the face of God (John Gillespie Magee)
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)
Cloud Seas 
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