This book conveys the infectious mixture of enthusiasm, joy and awe which mountains inspire in the author. It follows the climbing career of a crystal-hunting Austrian teenager who went on to discover his native Alps, climbing in a succession of seasons the Brenva Face of Mont Blanc, the North Face of the Dent d'Herens, the Obergabelhorn direct, the North Face of the Matterhorn, the Konigswand, the Peuterey Ridge and the North Face of the Eiger. While further afield his small-scale Alpine-style expeditions took him to Broad Peak with Hermann Buhl and on a tragic denouement on Chogolisa to Tirich Mir in the Hindu Kush and the iceberg-choked fiords of Greenland.