Behind the curtain of high mountains

NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER LOSE HOPE, KEEP TESTING YOUR LIMITS – this is the credo of Dina Štěrbová, the first woman and the first Czech to have conquered the eight-thousand metre peaks of Cho Oyu, in 1984. At that time, women with ice axes and crampons were considered a rarity at eight-thousanders. When she secretly climbed Gerlach at the age of fourteen, she could not yet provide the right answer to her mother’s question: “Why do you climb those mountains?” Fifteen years later, she expressed herself in her book Cho Oyu, The Turquoise Mountain: “To conquer the mountains is to conquer purposelessness. They are beautiful in their endless variations, treacherous and heartless like the Sirens. Not tailored to the person who comes uninvited into their sanctuary. There is no winners’ podium at the summits, only an icy rock where the marathon takes a turn and where we may have grasped the essence of being.” We will accompany the eighty-one-year-old mountaineer on her farewell trip to the high mountains, on an expedition to Pakistan during a humanitarian mission.