At the turn of the 20th century, the young orphan Andreas is sent to live with his ruthless uncle on a farm in a remote valley; a valley that Andreas will only leave once in his life. Treated not as family but as a worker, Andreas endures a childhood without affection, full of brutality and hard labour. At the age of 18, he has grown into a strong man and finds work as a woodsman. He works on the construction of an invention: the mountain ropeway. This invention marks the beginning of alpine tourism but is paid for with the many deaths of mountain workers. Andreas is no stranger to hard labour, and now that he is earning his own money, he buys himself a small plot of land with a cabin high up in the valley. He soon finds something he has never experienced before: love.