Mountains in My Heart: A Passion for Climbing - Tapa blanda

• - First woman--and only the fourth climber ever--to summit all fourteen 8,000-meter peaks without supplemental oxygen or high-altitude porters


• - Though the two climbers are friends, Kaltenbrunner's path to high places has been very different from Edurne Pasaban's record-breaking feat


• - Positive, uplifting account of a remarkable athlete

Effusive, charismatic, tough, Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner is one of the world's most successful high-altitude mountaineers and the first woman to climb all fourteen 8,000-meter peaks without supplemental oxygen----and she also eschews high-altitude porters.

Mountains in My Heart covers her early years learning to climb in Austria, her personal life, her training as an oncology nurse, and her ever-present passion for mountains, especially the Himalaya. Her love of being in the mountains shines through in her writing: For Gerlinde the important thing was not the race to be the first woman to climb the 8,000-meter peaks, but rather to experience the mountains and climb them in her self-sufficient style. Self-sufficiency did not, however, mean climbing without her husband, Ralf Dujmovits; in 2009, Lhotse became her twelfth and his fourteenth 8,000-meter peak!

Kaltenbrunner shares the challenges, dangers, and euphoria of her high-altitude climbs, detailing medical emergencies and her own feelings about being high in the mountains. Her writing is honest, captivating, and unrestrained.

Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner was born in 1970 in Kirchdorf, Krems, Austria. She climbed her first 8,000-meter mountain, Broad Peak in Pakistan, at the age of twenty-three. She reached its lower peak (a mere 8,027 meters); it was not until 2007 that she reached the official summit at 8,047 meters. Between expeditions, she conducts a variety of tours, including rock-climbing, ice-walking, and skiing, in the eastern and western Alps. She lives with her husband, extreme mountaineer Ralf Dujmovits, in Germany's Black Forest.