The mountains often provide life-changing experiences, unforgettable in the vivid lucidity with which they are later recalled, sometimes crushing in the agony and grief they can impose. Perhaps the most vivid moments in this book occur when on the summit Herzog thinks to himself, ‘How wonderful life would now become! What an inconceivable experience it is to attain one’s ideal and, at the very same moment, to fulfil oneself. I was stirred to the depths of my being. Never had I felt happiness like this – so intense and yet so pure.’ Within an hour of starting the descent he was to be plunged
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