I was born in 1947 in Warsaw, the capital city of Poland, about 500 kilometers north of the closest mountains. When I was eight years old my mother took me on a skiing trip to the mountains, which almost ended my life. In search of a challenge, I skied down the steepest hill, not knowing how to stop at the bottom. After flying over the road, I ended in a creek lined with field stones. A heavy ski hat and luck saved my life. In the early years, skiing was my passion and mountaineering and climbing was not on the agenda.

I was six years old when Ed Hillary and Tensing Norgay first climbed Mount Everest. A few years later my mother bought me John Hunt's book about the expedition. It was exciting reading, but I was still too young to climb. Other books followed. Tensing's biography, Walter Bonatti's memoirs, and one of the most tragic epic, Maurice Herzog struggles on Annapurna.

Warsaw was 12 hours by train from Tatra Mountains and school and later university occupied most of my time. But the magic pull of the mountains remained working and finally in the spring of 1968, with my climbing buddy Piotr Druzynski, I started my mountaineering career. Those were the days of great political changes with the Prague Spring, student strikes at the Polish universities, and the escalating war in Vietnam. Mountaineering in Poland was considered to be yet another of the numerous "amateur" sport activities to be controlled by the Government. Most of us were truly amateurs, and my case was quite typical. Polish currency was not exchangeable to western, so called hard currencies and mountaineering equipment was not readily available. We got our pitons from a blacksmith in Warsaw. They were hammered out of flat pieces of steel, twisted at the top and drilled through to provide opening for carabiners. They were about 10 mm thick and weighted a quarter of a kilogram each. To carry a rack of them over one's shoulder greatly contributed to our fitness level. For the carabiners we used stuff locally made  for safety harnesses. We tested one of them in the laboratory at the Warsaw Polytechnic (my alma mater) and found that it took about 2500 kg to break them. Little did we know then about dynamic forces. A rope used as sheets for sailing boats looked very impressive. It was made out of nylon, which was quite an improvement from the earlier ropes made out of organic materials. Local tailor cut and saw our backpacks. We had two types, one called "horolezka" was an equivalent of modern day summit backpack albeit without reinforcing structure and hip belt, and the second called "elephant leg", a tall cylinder with two shoulder straps attached. The "elephant leg" was used to carry the equipment to the base camps and occasionally as a sleeping bag during unexpected bivouacs.

The Tatra Mountains are the highest part of the Carpathian Range. In Poland, they are only 51 km long and about 15 km wide. For the next five years, until summer of 1972, I spent every winter and summer vacations climbing and hiking in the three main valleys: Hala Gasienicowa, Dolina Pieciu Stawow Polskich and Dolina Rybiego Potoku.

In the fall of 1972 my disappointment with the political situation in Poland forced me to leave the country and immigrate to Canada. After a short period of acclimatization in Montreal, I finally settled in Toronto. The mountains were now more than 2,500 km away. Slowly my youth dreams receded further and further back. The harsh reality of the new life, family matters, business ventures, mortgages and other aspects of "normal" life have taken over all of my time. Instead of climbing I was spending more and more time on other sports, such as alpine skiing, tennis and nordic skiing. Mountaineering was not even an option.

But the mountain bug was still in my blood and it attacked me with a force of an atom bomb in the winter of 1999/2000. All of a sudden I knew that I had to go back to the mountains, and not simply to ski but to climb. Of course being fifty three years old, I did not have a lot of time for a slow approach. In the spring of 2000 I signed up with a small Polish expedition. I still do no understand how it happened that Ryszard Pawlowski, one of the world's leading mountaineers, agreed to accept a climber without any prior experience for his expedition to Cho Oyu (8,201 m). But he did, and in the fall of 2000 I was finally flying from Toronto to Kathmandu. The expedition was a big disappointment from the mountaineering point of view (I did not reach the summit) but a great experience otherwise.

Tragic events on the Cho Oyu trip did not discouraged me from continuation. In the summer of 2001 I was back, climbing Mount Logan, the highest peak in Canada at 5,959 m, with International Mountain Guides. Bad weather stopped our progress in Camp 4 only 400 m below the peak.

My bad luck continued in the fall of 2002. Brilliantly organized and run Jagged Globe expedition to Shishapangma (8,013 m) in Tibet was abruptly stopped in Camp 2 by a five-day long storm less than 1,000 m below the summit. Only outstanding mountaineering experience of the leader Steve Bell saved our skins during the terrifying decent through the snow laden glacier.

Now I had three strikes against me and it was obvious that the next expedition was bound to be a success. In the early summer of 2003 I joined a Jagged Globe expedition to Denali (6,194 m). But my bad luck continued and once again, a sudden storm stopped our progress in Camp 4 only a day climb from the summit.

Like a compulsive gambler, I decided in the fall of 2004, to try my luck again. To improve the odds I decided to return to Cho Oyu. After all, I knew the mountain well and felt that with good weather the summit was definitely within my reach. With a help from Ron Holt, the leader of Jagged Globe expedition, sirdar Nima Temba Sherpa, and mostly my climbing buddy Wyn Morgan, on September 25,  after five years of bitter disappointments, I was able to play the scene, which was always on my mind - with a breaking voice I called Ron in the base camp to tell him that I was standing on the summit. Thirty kilometers to the east and only 649 m higher I could clearly see the summit of Mount Everest. I knew that  this was my future goal. The idea of Seven Summits Quest was born at that moment.

Now I welcome you on a journey to the ends of the Earth. On March 26, 2005 I will start my Seven Summits Quest with a Jagged Globe expedition to the south side of Mount Everest. I hope that you will be able to join me.

Namaste

Jack