so i think this aphorism is borrowed from a quote by Alex Lowe (in the American Alpine Journal); For those not familiar with AL, he was a brilliant alpine climb

so i think this aphorism is borrowed from a quote by Alex Lowe (in the American Alpine Journal); For those not familiar with AL, he was a brilliant alpine climber of apparently super-human endurance who died while climbing Shishapangma (an 8,000 metr Himalayan peak in Tibet. I know very little about the context in which AL made this statement, but his remark might have been provoked by his impatience with the obsession to rank climbers (like baseball pitchers or NFL running backs), given that to him climbing was a deeply personal endeavour rather than a spectator sport.