“Mountaineering offers an emotional experience which cannot otherwise be reached.”

-George Mallory, English Mountaineer, 1886-1924.

This quote is from the book Climbing Everest, which collects the personal writings of George Mallory, a legendary mountaineer known for his attempts at climbing Mount Everest. This quote is part of a longer passage where Mallory discusses mountaineering literature at the time. It tended to focus on the physical expedition rather than the emotional adventure. The latter is where Mallory spent much of his efforts while writing about his experiences in the mountains. The larger quote follows:

It must be admitted at the outset that our periodic literature gives little indication that our performance is concerned no less with the spiritual side of us than with the physical. This is, in part, because we require certain practical information of anyone who describes an expedition. Our journals, with one exception, do not pretend to be elevated literature, but aim only at providing useful knowledge for climbers. With this purpose we try to show exactly where upon a mountain our course lay, in what manner the conditions of snow and ice and rocks and weather were or were not favorable to our enterprise, and what were the actual difficulties we had to overcome and the dangers we had to meet. Naturally, if we accept these circumstances, the impulse for literary expression vanishes; not so much because the matter is not suitable as because, for literary expression, it is too difficult to handle. A big expedition in the Alps, say a traverse of Mont Blanc, would be a superb theme for an epic poem. But we are not all even poets, still less Homers or Miltons. We do, indeed, possess lyric poetry that is concerned with mountains, and value it highly for the expression of much that we feel about them. But little of it can be said to suggest that mountaineering in the technical sense offers an emotional experience which cannot otherwise be reached. A few essays and a few descriptions do give some indication that the spiritual part of man is concerned. Most of those who describe expeditions do not even treat them as adventure, still less as being connected with any emotional experience peculiar to mountaineering.

Mallory is best known for his writing style, which focused on the spiritual and emotional side of mountaineering. This filled a void in mountaineering literature of his time, and it is one main reason why his writings still resonate with mountaineers today.

Check out other posts that mention George Mallory here.


Quote taken from Mallory, George. Climbing Everest: The Complete Writings of George Mallory. London: Gibson Square, 2012. 19.