What drew me to Kazakhstan was a curiosity to learn about life in this ‘middle earth’ of steppe between the endless forests of Russia in the north and the world’s greatest mountain chains to the south.
No studio in Hollywood wanted ‘Cold Mountain.’ None. No one wanted ‘Ripley,’ no one wanted ‘The English Patient.’ That tells you there isn’t really an appetite for ambitious movie-making out there.
Facebook has stitched together your social graph. The idea of an interest graph is to bring together everyone that has shared interests. If I can isolate the people who are into mountain biking in Marin, in one place, the ability to put ads against that is really high.
The best view is always from the mountain you’ve climbed.
I was in a mountain biking accident and broke my sternum about three months before my unit was supposed to deploy to Iraq, and it’s such a close-knit community that the idea of not getting to go is hugely jarring, so I tried to get put back in training and wound up injuring it worse.
The destruction of the natural beauty, the ecosystems, and the majesty of mountains affect us in ways we’re not even aware of. Every time a mountain is beheaded, we chop off a little part of our souls.
There was one time I flagged every ‘Brokeback Mountain’ review on Netflix that was negative. I was, like, ‘not helpful,’ and I spent, like, an hour doing it, and I wrote a really serious review about it. It’s hard for me not to get really sensitive. I don’t brush things off like that very easily.
It could be the case that all the studies supporting a warming planet are wrong; science always leaves that door open, but anthropogenic climate change remains the best explanation for a mountain of data that scientists have been poring over for a century.
The only very rugged part of the route is in crossing the Big Horn mountain, which is about 30 miles wide.
When I was 23, I went to Alaska by myself into the glaciers of the coast range and climbed a mountain by myself. It was incredibly reckless, incredibly stupid. But I was lucky. And I survived, and I came back to tell my story.
There is no substitute for a real location when you’re trying to shoot the jungle. You can’t just go anywhere. You’ve got to go where it’s lush and green and there really is those mountain ranges, the trees and the ocean.
I love sport and will do just about anything. Someone said they’d had a go at skiing off a mountain with a parachute, and that sounds great!
I explained I wanted to descend as quickly as possible to camp IV in order to warm myself and gather a supply of hot drink and oxygen in the event I might need to go back up the mountain to assist descending climbers.
By reading Huckleberry Finn I felt I was able to justify my act of going into the mountain forest at night and sleeping among the trees with a sense of security which I could never find indoors.
I could have bought a pristine part of Tanzania. But I saw a beautiful mountain, game that could come back, and country that could be rich again.
I grew up in suburban New York, and my family wasn’t much on traveling, so when I arrived at my alma mater, The Colorado College, I’d never been out West before, seen a 14,000-foot mountain, experienced snow in 70-degree weather, or come into contact with something called a ‘dude.’
The dark shadow we seem to see in the distance is not really a mountain ahead, but the shadow of the mountain behind – a shadow from the past thrown forward into our future. It is a dark sludge of historical sectarianism. We can leave it behind us if we wish.
Once a landscape is industrialized, its wild character is lost for good. You can’t recreate untouched tundra, mountain meadows, crystal clear streams, and animals that have never encountered toxic waste.
I play guitar, the ukulele and the piano. I grew up on a mountain in Tennessee, and we had ‘The Mountain Opry,’ where anyone could just get up on stage to perform. It was just about the soul and heart of music. My upbringing was less about being great and more about just doing what you love. It was always for joy.
Mountain biking is such a very small community. I just want to put the hard work in so people don’t think I’m a slacker. I want the hardcore mountain bikers to respect, ‘Okay, well, he did it the right way.’
My dad taught me never to be afraid of what’s on the other side of the mountain.
I watched my parents’ fame diminish – as I was getting more conscious, their celebrity was going back down the mountain.
Mining created Chile. The story of men who go down into the mountain and chip away at minerals in the darkness and then suffer an accident that leaves them at the mercy of that darkness is part of the DNA of Chile, an integral part of the country’s history.
I guess I am in handsome – in certain parts of the world. If I was, like, in Mongolia, living on a mountain and in my village, I could be the hottest guy. In L.A., I’m… average?
You have to be sort of an emotional steward to really get a business to do something hard – to take people up the hill, to conquer the mountain, to sack the city. You have got to be a maniac.
Let’s not mince words: Everest doesn’t attract a whole lot of well-balanced folks. The self-selection process tends to weed out the cautious and the sensible in favor of those who are single-minded and incredibly driven. Which is a big reason the mountain is so dangerous.
