The joy of reaching the top times 82: All the peaks of the Alp’s 4000m mountains.

On mountains like the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc and the Dufour Peak it’s not about speed or the levels of difficulty, but about realizing how little you actually need to reach the summit of happiness.

It’s not until she is forced to use up her vacation days one day that sport journalist Marlies Czerny hits the mountain. The first meters are incredibly demanding. But still, it’s an escape from the sensory overload of journalism and a journey to oneself. That feeling of climbing higher than 4,000 meters for the first time. The warmth of the sunrises with their intense colors. The horror when other climbers don’t make it back down. Marlies Czerny not only balances along steep ridges with her climbing partners, but also between work and life. Ten years later, she is one of the first women to have reached the peaks of all of the Alp’s 4000m mountains.

With a foreword from Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner