Meet Paul.

It began close to home.

I was born and raised in Umhausen in the Ötztal. My father’s love of the mountains and his closeness to nature meant that my two sisters and I were introduced to hiking and mountaineering from an early age, naturally and through play. Our journey of discovery began in the forest, among moss-covered ground, rocks, trees and intriguing caves. Before long, it took us into the mountains above our village.

Fascinated by the surrounding 3,000-metre peaks and the high, glaciated mountains of the upper Ötztal, I soon made Heinrich Klier’s Rother guidebooks to the Ötztal and Stubai Alps, along with the accompanying Alpine Club maps, my favourite reading. I was so captivated that, while still in primary school, I knew every hut, pass and summit by heart—including its altitude, approach time, difficulty and particular features.

Naturally, I wanted to climb as many of those summits as possible. The highlights of those years were reaching the Wildspitze at six and the summit of the Großglockner just before my eighth birthday, alongside countless other adventures that were no less exciting to me.

Until my teens, my father had been my guide, companion and climbing partner. Now it was time to head out on my own and take responsibility for myself.

What followed were my “wild years”, when adventure came first. We felt as though the world was ours for the taking. Looking back, I sometimes think I had to survive those years. That first chapter of independent mountaineering ended with a serious avalanche burial and a 40-metre fall while climbing in the Mieminger Mountains. I was very lucky to come through both incidents relatively unscathed.

A brief spell in conventional working life soon made something clear: the life I wanted looked different. I wanted to spend as much time as possible in the mountains and experience for myself all the places I had admired in guidebooks and climbed in my daydreams as a boy. My relationship with mountaineering changed again. I began to see the mountains through that little boy’s eyes.

I remembered how eagerly I had looked forward to every mountain day, how much I had loved preparing for it and studying maps and guidebooks. I remembered how even the small, easily overlooked things had fascinated me: every new summit, every glacier, every descent through deep snow. I remembered the excitement when my father took me out of school for a mountain trip, and how impressed I was by the “real” mountaineers with their enormous, heavy packs. And I remembered how much I admired mountain guides—the heroes of my childhood.

Now I’m one of them.

Even after many years as a professional mountain guide and ski instructor, the mountains have lost none of their magic for me. I still look forward to every day of guiding and remain fascinated by the endless possibilities they offer. I love studying the landscape, guidebooks and maps as much as I ever did, looking for new paths, variations and possibilities. Every new summit, every new route, every unfamiliar place and every untouched slope of powder still makes me feel like a child again—as does the priceless feeling of watching a new day begin from high in the mountains.

I may have grown a little older, calmer and wiser over the years. But at heart, I’m probably still that same little boy.