After five expeditions over twelve years, David Göttler stands atop the 8,125-meter-high Nanga Parbat. His success is hard-won but achieved with the greatest possible self-sufficiency.

For unlike the full-service expeditions of commercial operators, the modern Sisyphus climbed not on the standard route, but on the complex and remote “Schell Route”, which scales the enormous Rupal Face of Nanga Parbat, before it reaches the upper part of the Diamir Face.

Fifty years after its first ascent, David Göttler is thus demonstrating the state of the art in modern high-altitude mountaineering – which shaped him both as mountaineer and human being.