Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner didn’t climb K2 because she wanted to be the world’s first woman to summit all 14 8,000-meter peaks without oxygen. But that’s exactly what she did. She grew up skiing in the mountains of her native Austria, and then worked as a nurse, spending her weekends climbing the local Alps. Her unstoppable appetite for adventure finally drove her to blaze a trail into the male domain of high-altitude mountaineering. Meet this astonishing mountaineer and share the dramatic story of how she prepared for and triumphed on K2, told with breathtaking photos and video from the roof of the world.

Photographs: Ralf Dujmovits and Maxut Zhumayev