MOUNTAINEERING AS A WAY OF LIFE

Tests of courage and solo efforts, exploring human limits, being addicted to the highest peaks.
Reinhold Messner had already written about this fifty years ago, as a young man. Even then, the exploration of the Alps had already been completed, the highest mountains had been conquered. Did this render mountaineering pointless?

Messner’s text is more topical than ever. People still use the solitude of the mountains to escape the noise of the cities. This is where we find the space to rebound that we need urgently—then as now—and that we should preserve, which is more crucial than ever before. Messner’s attitude towards the mountains is reflected even in his earliest work.

Reinhold Messner takes us to the mountains in poems, observations, and notes accompanied by amazing black and white images.

»With its touching poems, observations and notes, the work appeals not only to mountaineers.«
Neue Welt

»Messner’s impressive plea for the preservation of an intact mountain world is flanked by magnificent black-and-white photographs in which photographer Andre Schönherr gives the mountains back their mystery.«
Augsburger Allgemeine