Conrad Anker

“When I was a kid, we would build pillow forts. My pillow fort was always like Ice Station 9 in Antarctica. The other kids would come by and be like, 'Oh! The wind and snow is blowing.' From a young age, I wanted to be out there and surviving. I'm a high-strung, hyperactive guy.”

“Once I graduated from university, I wanted to climb and be outdoors as much as possible. I worked as a part-time carpenter and kept up a relationship with The North Face. One thing led to another, and I'm lucky to be where I am now. It was a circuitous path with lots of adventure throughout.”

“The mountains are a demanding, cold place, and they don't allow for mistakes.”

“If people see me giving back to the military, they'll hopefully follow suit and be good to these guys who have done so much. I'm not Lance Armstrong or Tiger Woods - I'm just an old, gray-beard mountain climber, but I'm hoping to inspire people to follow my way.”

“If people want to go do some big outdoor thing for their ego, have them climb snowy mountains rather than shoot animals.”

“Standing on the apex of our planet is humbling. I'm starved of oxygen, depleted of reserves, unable to eat, and bound by anxiety. This is a dangerous place. Yet the symbolism of standing on top of the world gives me a chance to experience time on a cosmic scale.”

“The alpine environment is very delicate. I've been able to see change in the mountains in the 20 years that I've been climbing full-time. Glaciers have receded. The tree-line is changing. That's very rapid to see nature changing in a 20-year period.”

“Perhaps you could say that mountaineers are driven by ego or our competitiveness, but there's a lot more to it than that. Whether it's a huge face in the Himalaya or some crag in the woods behind your house, exploration offers us a unique perspective on the world that you can't really find anywhere else.”

“Yes, I was inspired by Jack London and still love reading his books. Ernie Banks is another hero because I lived in Chicago for two years as a kid, and I loved that he was the Cubs' loyal underdog and one of the first African-Americans to make that breakthrough.”

“Here at home, we're in a world of right angles and human construct, so whether it's cement or plastic or steel, everything is at an angle. But nature is chaos theory in full play. So having that uniqueness of what nature is gives me a sense of rejuvenation and scale.”

“The summit is what drives us, but the climb itself is what matters.”

“Meru is the culmination of all I've done and all I've wanted to do.”

“I'm done with Everest. I did it three times, and I need to be good at that and be happy with it and focus on other climbs.”

“It's our human nature to explore. Tens of thousands of years ago, our species walked out of Africa, traveling far and wide across the entire planet, from the Arctic to the tip of Tierra Del Fuego, making us the most geographically diversified species on Earth.”

“I like to think that today is the best day of my life and tomorrow will be the next best day of my life. And if you think that way, you're living for the beauty of today.”

“I think, as a young guy, I was always drawn to being in wild places. Climbing was a logical extension of that.”

“It takes a lot of resources to climb Everest, and a lot of other people. But you should go do it.”

“From a climbing standpoint, gravity is the adversary. You and your fellow humans are striving together to get to the same place at the same time. And I think that's a really good way for humans to interact.”

“Specifically choose not to take a GPS. Just create a challenge. You can climb Everest or walk across Antarctica with minimal gear and still have that sense of adventure. But in terms of exploration, Google Earth has this world mapped down to the square foot.”

“The mountains seem to have conquered us long before we set foot on them, and they will remain long after our brief existence. This indomitable force of the mountains gives us humans a blank canvas on which to paint the drive of discovery and, in the process, test the limits of human performance.”