Maybe I like this book so much because there are many parallels between Mark Horrell’s and my own mountain “career”. We both started as hill walkers, anything but free from fear of great height. Like me, Mark visited Nepal for the first time in 2002 and was as fascinated, not to say infected, by the Himalayas and the people living there as I was then. We both worked up, getting more experienced, reaching higher altitudes, had to cope with setbacks until we finally fulfilled our dreams – both far away from being exceptional climbers. In 2014, I was among the first climbers on 7,129 m high Kokodak Dome in western China, I would never have thought possible twelve years before – just as little as Mark could not imagine in 2002 becoming an Everest summiter within ten years. But he really did it. Unlike me, he after a while completely changed his way of life, taking only temporary jobs to have the opportunity to live his new passion for going on expeditions.

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