Beyond Possible: One Man, 14 Peaks, and the Mountaineering Achievement of a Lifetime

⚡️ 10 Quotes from the book

“I hadn’t been delivered into this world for defeat. Quitting wasn’t in my blood, even in a near-death crisis. I wasn’t a sheep waiting to be prodded by the shepherd; I was a lion and I refused to walk and talk with the rest.”

copy text

“Sometimes I went to church, other times I’d visit a Buddhist monastery, but I always wanted to learn new ideas; I was open and human, I respected every religion in the world, but I had faith in myself more than anything.”

copy text

“I had no idea I’d broken the world record for climbing Everest and Lhotse in such quick succession. It wasn’t my aim, only topping three peaks had been in my sightlines, but when I was told at Base Camp that the previous best had been twenty hours, I was shocked. I’d accidentally cut nearly ten hours from the fastest registered time.”

copy text

“The mountains were just about the best therapy a person could experience. Life felt so much simpler when you were connected to nature by a climbing rope and a set of crampons.”

copy text

“On average around three hundred people climbed Everest successfully every season; at Kanchenjunga that number came in at around twenty-five.”

copy text

“I’d climbed my first mountain in 2012 and not seven years later, I was on my way to working through all fourteen 8,000-ers in seven months. I’d proven to everybody that it was never too late to make a massive change in life.”

copy text

“One of the things that I’d learned by living in Nepal was that Everest makes money – a lot of money. Where there’s money, there’s politics. And whenever politics arrives, trouble is sure to follow.”

copy text

“I knew more than anyone that nature didn’t care for reputation, age, gender, or background. It was equally indifferent to personality: the mountain couldn’t give a shit if the people exploring it were morally nasty or nice.”

copy text

“Not only had I managed to climb the world’s fourteen highest peaks, shattering the world record by over seven years, but I’d also posted the fastest time for climbing from the summit of Everest to Lhotse and then Makalu.”

copy text

“I have to push my limits to the max. Sitting tight, waiting it out and living in the past, has never been my thing. I want to be at the world’s highest point again, knowing it might slip out from underneath me at any moment. Because that is the only way to live – and to die.”

copy text