Table of Contents

Foreword–Sir Robin Knox-Johnston

Preface

I A False Start

II A Real Start

III The First Leg

IV The Long Haul

V The Magellan Straits

VI Punta Arenas

VII The Magellan Straits

VIII Into the Channels

IX Peel Inlet

X The Calvo Glacier

XI The Calvo Pass

XII Lake Argentino and Back

XIII A Near Thing

XIV The Pacific

XV Valparaiso to the Panama Canal

XVI Rolling Home

Record of earlier attempts to cross the ice-cap

Two Summers Before the Mast—Bob Comlay

About the Author

Harold William ‘Bill’ Tilman (1898–1977) was among the greatest adventurers of his time, a pioneering mountaineer and sailor who held exploration above all else. Tilman joined the army at seventeen and was twice awarded the Military Cross for bravery during WWI.

After the war Tilman left for Africa, establishing himself as a coffee grower. He met Eric Shipton and began their famed mountaineering partnership, traversing Mount Kenya and climbing Kilimanjaro. Turning to the Himalaya, Tilman went on two Mount Everest expeditions, reaching 27,000 feet without oxygen in 1938. In 1936 he made the first ascent of Nanda Devi – the highest mountain climbed until 1950.

He was the first European to climb in the remote Assam Himalaya, he delved into Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor and he explored extensively in Nepal, all the while developing a mountaineering style characterised by its simplicity and emphasis on exploration.

It was perhaps logical then that Tilman would eventually buy the pilot cutter Mischief – not with the intention of retiring from travelling, but to access remote mountains. For twenty-two years Tilman sailed Mischief and her successors to Patagonia, where he crossed the vast ice cap, and to Baffin Island to make the first ascent of Mount Raleigh. He made trips to Greenland, Spitsbergen and the South Shetlands, before disappearing in the South Atlantic Ocean in 1977.