"Here be dragons" said the old maps. In the late-18th century, a few brave men started to venture up the mountains of Switzerland to discover the secrets hidden in their snowy peaks. They took with them wine and brandy, wore ordinary shoes and had no protective clothing. Then the British arrived: a gallery of strange, obsessive explorers bent on conquering every Alpine summit. "Mountaineering" was born. This is a history of the conquest of the Alps.