Reinhold Messner
Reinhold Messner (born September 17, 1944) is an Italian mountaineer and explorer from South Tyrol, often cited as the greatest mountain climber of all time. He is renowned for making the first solo ascents of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen and for being the first climber to ascend all fourteen "eight-thousanders" (peaks over 8,000 metres above sea level). He is the author of at least 63 books (in German, 1970–2006), many of which have been translated into other languages.
“The wonderful things in life are the things you do, not the things you have.”
Reinhold Messner
“Not only during the ascent, but also during the descent my willpower is dulled. The longer I climb the less important the goalseems to me, the more indifferent I become to myself. My attentionhas diminished, my memory is weakened. My mental fatigue is nowgreater than the bodily. It is so pleasant to sit doing nothing - and therefore so dangerous. Death through exhaustion is like deaththrough freezing - a pleasant one.”
Reinhold Messner
“...seen from above, landscapes are made up of mountains and watercourses. Just as a transparent model of the human body consists of a framework of bone and a network of arteries, the earth's crust is structured in mountain ridges, river, creeks, and gullies.”
Reinhold Messner