This book is one man's story of engineering and mountaineering. It is an inspirational account of how one young man built his life from very modest beginnings—with little money or education, joining the adult world as an apprentice engineer, going on to academic distinction and a great career as a director of a large manufacturing concern in South Africa. It is an account also of how that young man found himself and tested himself against some great challenges in the mountains of Ireland and Scotland. Not for nothing was one of the climbs in Scotland to be named the Crack of Doom. It is also a story about how a young man almost died six times but it was not God's time!