“The big problem with being solo is that you cannot divide fear. Doing a difficult ascent is a lot about your own fear, and if you are together with another person, or with two people, you can divide that fear, share it. But when you are alone, the fear is all on you, and it’s very difficult to learn to cope with it, to stay day by day, night by night, in that vast space where you should not be, running into bad weather, avalanches, storms. You have to learn to cope, you have to learn it slowly, and in small steps. If you allow it to happen slowly, you will have the time to take the many, many steps you need to get where you want. But if you don’t have the time, either you will disappear somewhere in the mountains in your young years, or you would give up climbing altogether.” - Reinhold Messner
