This book was written for young guys, who, perhaps, will be carried away by the romance of the high mountains. But the veterans of mountaineering, I hope, it will be interesting. And, of course, I wrote it for myself. Thanks to these memories, I was able to relive my adventures in the mountains, to recall the successes and defeats as an athlete and as a coach.
Each expedition we hold is worthy of a separate book, but you can not embrace the vast, so I only told what was most memorable, preserved in diary entries that led in the mountains 25 years before Everest and 25 years after Everest.
Recently in Ukraine came an interesting book by the legendary climber Reinhold Messner "My life is on the limit". I shared my impressions about this book with my old acquaintance, an experienced Lviv mountaineer and journalist Sergei German, with whom I graduated from the All-Union training and methodological training for trainers of the 1st category in the Caucasus in 1984. Knowing my intentions to write a book about mountaineering in my life, Sergei unexpectedly suggested building this book on questions and answers. I am grateful to Sergey for the fact that he throttled me, and our conversations on Skype formed the basis of the future book day after day.
As always, my wife Lilia was the first assistant in this difficult work for me.
I am grateful to the artist and mountaineer Yuri Domesov, who undertook a huge work on artistic design, Marina and Vladimir Babiy for literary editing of the book.
The abundance of beautiful photos I owe to the master of sports Pavel Serenkov, as well as my partner in the bunch, the master of sports Vadim Leontiev, Diane Roberts and Odessa.
Special thanks for support in the preparation and publication of the book to the Charitable Foundation "Alexey Stavnitser Foundation" and Valentin Aleksandrovich Kobylyansky.
And more. I tried not to give assessments, characteristics to my colleagues on ascents and expeditions. All of them are courageous and brave people, for whom mountaineering is not only a sport, but also a way of life. Save a friend in trouble, even at a tremendous height - the norm of life for each of them. Pass the first difficult overhanging section of the wall, lay a trench on the avalanche snow slope, each of them will consider it an honor.
The reader will be sure of this by reading the book.
