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How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! John Muir
This time it is real — all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death! John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra
Climb the mountains and get the good tidings. John Muir
Keep close to Nature’s heart ... and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean. John Muir
The mountains are calling and I must go. John Muir
The tendency nowadays to wander in wilderness is delightful to see. Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken over-civilised people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home. That wildness is a necessity, and that mountain parks and reservations are useful ... as fountains of life. John Muir
The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thoughts and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains – mountain dwellers who have grown strong there with the forest trees in Nature's workshops. John Muir
One day’s exposure to mountains is better than cartloads of books. John Muir
Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery. Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Most monkeys couldn’t live up here. No fruit and few insects to feed on. But chaladas are unique: they are the only monkeys in the world to live almost entirely on grass. They live in the largest assemblies formed by any monkeys; some groups are eight hundred strong, and they crop the high meadows like herds of wildebeest. David Attenborough, Planet Earth s1e2: Mountains, BBC 2006
The puma: the lion of the Andes. Pumas are usually solitary and secretive ... Although the cubs are now as large of their mother they still rely on her for their food. ibid.
In the American Rockies 100,000 avalanches devastate the slopes every winter. ibid.
A grizzly bear: it seems to be an odd creature to find on these high rocky slopes ... They’re searching for a rather unusual food: moths. ibid.
All mountains everywhere are being worn down by frost, snow and ice. ibid.
Mont Blanc – the highest peak in western Europe. ibid.
The giant Baltoro Glacier in the Karakoram mountains of Pakistan. It’s the biggest mountain glacier on Earth – forty-three miles long and over three miles wide. ibid.
A snow leopard – the rarest of Himalayan animals .... These are the first intimate images of snow leopard ever filmed in the wild. ibid.
Golden eagles patrol these cliffs in search of the weak or injured. ibid.
On the highest summits of our planet nothing can live permanently. The highest peak of all – Mount Everest – five and a half miles above sea level and still rising. The roof of our world. Of those humans who have tried to climb it, one in ten have lost their lives. ibid.
There are only a dozen peaks in the world that rise five miles high. All of them are here in the Himalayas. David Attenborough, Planet Earth s2e2: Mountains, BBC 2016
The Alps: Europe’s highest peaks. Its winter and food is desperately short. ibid.
For animals that have the endurance, mountains can be sanctuaries. ibid.
In the Rockies rising temperatures are shortening winter hibernation and stifling the growth of valuable food plants. ibid.
Up in the mountains: every continent on Earth has such high snow fields. And each has its own community of animals that have adapted in their own to their crushing conditions that come with the cold. David Attenborough, Frozen Planet s2e3, BBC 2011
Golden Eagle: in winter there is just enough prey up [Alps] here, dead or alive, to sustain it. ibid.
The huge mountain range is called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge ... It’s part of a vast tear in the planet’s surface – a single line of underwater mountains and volcanoes that runs for over forty thousand miles around the planet. Richard Hammond’s Journey to the Bottom of the Ocean BBC 2011
We knocked the bastard off. Edmund Hillary, re ascent of Everest
I think I mainly climb mountains because I get a great deal of enjoyment out of it. I never attempt to analyze these things too thoroughly, but I think that all mountaineers do get a great deal of satisfaction out of overcoming some challenge which they think is very difficult for them, or which perhaps may be a little dangerous. Edmund Hillary
A man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificant by and by. The Alps and the glaciers together are able to take every bit of conceit out of a man and reduce his self-importance to zero if he will only remain within the influence of their sublime presence long enough to give it a fair and reasonable chance to do its work. Mark Twain
Because it’s there. George Leigh Mallory, cited New York Times 18th March 1923
Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery. John Ruskin, Modern Painters 1856
The highest mountain in the world is Mount Everest. Its peak rises to 8,848 m (29,028 ft 9 in) – the highest point in the world. Guinness World Records 2005 (50th edition)
The peak of Olympus Mons on Mars rises 25 km (15 miles) above its base. ibid.
This is Olympus Mons. Named after Mount Olympus. The mythical home of the Greek gods. This vast outpouring of lava stretches over 550 kilometres across. But it’s the height of this volcano that is breathtaking. Brian Cox, Wonders of the Solar System: Dead or Alive, BBC 2010
It is a fine thing to be out on the hills alone. A man can hardly be a beast or a fool alone on a great mountain. Francis Kilvert, 1840-79
Mount Rushmore, one of the great symbols of American freedom, may have been intended to signal white supremacy. The sixty-foot sculpture took more than a decade to complete. Brad Meltzer’s Decoded s2e6: Mount Rushmore, History 2011
Mount Everest: 29,000 feet. The highest point on Earth. Captivating and deadly. In the 1920s to conquer this mountain was the greatest challenge remaining in the golden age of adventure. The Wildest Dream: Conquest of Everest, BBC 2013
George Mallory dreamed of being the first man to climb Everest. ibid.
Over 200 people have died here, among them many sherpas. ibid.
And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.
And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. Isaiah 2:2&3
Behold, I am against thee, O destroying mountain, saith the Lord, which destroyest all the earth: and I will stretch out mine hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee a burnt mountain. Jeremiah 51:25
And I saw other mountains, and amongst them were groves of trees, and there flowed forth from them nectar, which is named sarara and galbanum. And beyond these mountains I saw another mountain to the east of the ends of the earth, whereon were aloe-trees, and all the trees were full of stacte, being like almond-trees. And when one burnt it, it smelt sweeter than any fragrant odour. Enoch 1:31:1-3