When I was a boy, the high peaks of the Ecuadorean Andes, where I lived at the time, held a peculiar fascination for me. A snow-capped mountain shining white in the morning sun had the power to move something deep within me, something that urged me to climb up to its summit and enter the pure and magical realm that hung there, gleaming in the sky. I did not know what that something was, nor where it came from, only that it was utterly compelling – and a source of endless daydreams. I began to climb with an Ecuadorean mountaineering club as a way of reaching that high and fantastic world of ice and snow so different from the usual surroundings of my everyday life.