The life of Halina Krüger-Syrokomska (1938–1982) is tailor-made for a moving film. She came from a Jewish family and, as a child, miraculously survived the bombing of her house – the collapsing walls created a “tent” over her crib. Later, as a young woman in the early 1960s, she fell in love with the mountains and made them her life, for better or for worse. She was not only among Poland’s leading female Tatra and Alpine climbers, but also one of the world’s foremost Himalaists. An art historian by education, she worked as an editor at the Youth Publishing Agency in Warsaw, but she in fact divided her life between raising her daughter Marianna and conquering the highest peaks. A beautiful and charismatic woman with an iron will and constitution, she proved to the world and to herself that Himalaism has no gender. She perished tragically just below the summit of K2, where her grave lies to this day. Her biography, written by one of Poland’s finest reporters, is a remarkable story of passion and overcoming barriers, for which one sometimes pays the highest price.