“We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. It's no use. So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go.” - George Mallory
I completely agree with George Mallory. I believe that his words are an accurate view of the main reason why men choose to reach for the sky. This quote is referring to Mt. Everest. George Mallory was the first man to attempt to reach the summit of that mountain. He and his partner died along the way. It is still unknown whether they ever reached the pinnacle of the earth. They were daring pioneers in an age, the 1920's, where climbing Everest might have been equivalent to landing on the moon during the 1960's.
This is an image from Colorado that I took early in the summer of 2012. The steep peak on the right is 12,700 ft. Hallet Peak. It is not really Everest, but it's the experience that counts and not the elevation. Later that summer I made it to the top where it was difficult to breath from the thin air in the exposed tundra. It is one of my own many small accomplishments of last year.
The fixed image in the background of my blog is a view of Longs Peak from Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. It is 14,259 ft. high. I have yet to hike/climb this peak. If I did it would be my first fourteener, which is what mountain climbers/hikers call a mountain that is over fourteen thousand feet. One of my goals is to go back and do it in the next few years.
