In October 1989 Jerzy Kukuczka dies during a Lhotse expedition. It was the first time he went to the Himalayas with money, good equipment and already as a famous climber. This tragic fate was the end of a remarkable life. Jerzy was a person who climbed up, higher and higher - literally, but also metaphorically. From a socialist worker to an international media star, from the man who climbs without any money and equipment to the real competitor of Reinhold Messner in the competition to climb the world’s highest mountains. Interviews with family and friends, archives, photographs, recordings, excerpts from television programmes make up the portrait of the Himalayan mountaineers in 1980s. It is also the image of the times in which they lived - hard and colourful at the same time, when idealism was valued more than fame.