Introduction

Tierra del Fuego, February 2007

Stumbling from one snow-covered rock to another, I silently cursed as yet another football-sized lump slid from under my foot and I fell heavily on to the slope. The scree I had been scrambling up for more than an hour would have been challenging enough in the dry, but with its present coating of heavy, wet snow it was positively dangerous. Occasionally, I was reduced to pedalling motions with my hands and feet, as if fighting my way up an icy escalator — the ‘down’ one. A relentless westerly gusting across the slope made the job even harder, driving the snow with such ferocity it stung my face. Yet despite the discomfort I was enjoying the exercise after days of inactivity forced upon us by bad weather.

The day had started easily enough, picking berries as we wandered through sheltered forest below the mountains. Soon enough the obstacles began. Faint trails petered out and tangles of dense undergrowth and fallen trees sent us on lengthy diversions. Huge moss-covered trunks toppled by mighty blasts off the southern oceans had to be scrambled over, timber-choked streambeds forded and steep banks climbed by clinging to tree roots and tussocks of grass. Time passed quickly in such terrain, but progress was slow. What had looked like a gentle stroll from below was clearly going to be a long and demanding day. This was not the manicured woodland of England, but a forest of nothofagus, the native beech that blankets large swathes of southern Chile, Argentina and New Zealand.

Higher up we had to wade through peat bog and skirt around beaver dam lakes; close to the tree line the remaining forest became bush-sized and maddeningly dense. It had been a relief to reach the slope of snow-covered grass above the stunted trees, but then came the scree I was now struggling up.

Gradually the fan of slippery stones narrowed to a couloir that appeared to provide an approach to our chosen summit. We were simply following a line of weakness up the mountain, as we had tried to do in the forest below. The scree finished abruptly at a short, steep buttress that guarded the way to the top. I contoured leftwards along a rake towards a small col about 50 metres away. It was easier to be moving almost horizontally with the wind at my back, but the ground dropped steeply away at my feet and I moved cautiously.

The col brought relief from the tension of the rake and exertion on the slopes below. It was not, however, a sheltered spot. The wind gusted unpredictably through the shallow notch and I had to hold tight to the rock above before peering round the corner. An up draught smacked into my face. Beyond lay steep cliffs and ice-encrusted rock. I had hoped the col would reveal an easier way to the top. It did not. Crampons, ice-axes and a rope would be required to climb the ground above, and we had not brought them with us. This windy spot would mark the highpoint of our day’s explorations.

Having stopped moving, my body soon chilled. I put on an extra jacket, swapped my thin inner gloves for fleece-lined over-mitts, and huddled against the rock to wait for the others.

Now I could fully appreciate the surrounding terrain. The view was striking in its desolation, an elemental landscape of storm cloud, snow-covered mountains, dark forest, lakes, rivers and sea. Shafts of sunlight cut through the cloud and picked out white horses in the Beagle Channel, which separated us on Isla Hoste from the mainland of Tierra del Fuego to the north. Yet for all the marvellous view my thoughts kept turning to the snowline. Here in the height of the southern summer it was down to 100 metres above sea level. Normally at this time of the year it would be at least a 1000 metres higher.

A chance set of circumstances had led to my first visit to Tierra del Fuego back in 2001. Before then I thought of it as an almost mythical land, linked with the names of Charles Darwin, Robert FitzRoy, captain of HMS Beagle, and the missionary Thomas Bridges whose son Lucas fashioned their family history and closeness with the Fuegian Indians into a remarkable book, The Uttermost Part of the Earth. And then there was the legendary Eric Shipton who spent the twilight of his long career as a mountaineer-explorer pioneering in the Cordillera Darwin, the largest range of peaks in this archipelago of mountainous islands. The reality of that initial visit exceeded my wildest expectations; these storm-racked islands captured my imagination and I would return again and again.

I had realised many years earlier that I climbed mountains because I relished the physical and mental challenge in that particular extreme environment. I felt I was re-connecting with the natural world — a world distanced from most of us in developed countries by our wealth, material comfort and the fact that we no longer need to engage with nature for a livelihood. Part of the lure was also one of escapism: life is simpler in the mountains.

After serving an apprenticeship on crags throughout England and North Wales, I graduated to winter mountaineering in Scotland, upping the ante on towering cliffs cloaked with snow and ice. This in turn led me to the European Alps, climbing routes of such difficulty and height they would sometimes take several days to complete. Next came exploratory alpinism on mountains or huge faces that had never been climbed before. Yet though, in retrospect, the path seems predetermined, when I went to Peru in 1985 with Joe Simpson and made the first ascent of Siula Grande’s West Face, I had no idea it would be the start of what looks like being a life-long calling. I moved on to the Karakoram, Himalaya, more visits to the Andes and to the mountains of Central Asia. But they would not be the end of my restless search.

Despite the remoteness of these mountainous regions, all have to some extent been shaped by people who have lived among them for centuries, sometimes millennia, marks of their presence extending far above the highest hamlets and summer camps. During nearly 30 years of exploration I have witnessed rapid change. Roads have been built to previously remote mountain villages, bringing commerce, electricity, schools and hospitals. Better infrastructure soon opened these areas to outsiders — people like myself. At first only a handful of adventurous climbers and trekkers penetrated deep into the mountains, but word spread and more general tourists quickly followed. Small towns grew to the size of cities and villages became towns.

I had been lucky to travel and climb in such places, and perhaps to experience them in quieter times. However passion and ambition was driving me on. I began to look at mountains beyond the margins of human habitation, increasingly appreciative of physical isolation and the commitment of climbing with just a single partner. Then the world changed again. As with road building, the communication revolution came late to the mountains but quickly gathered pace. Without really noticing how it had happened, I found myself entering these special places with computers and phones, and the lines between my mountain time, work and home became increasingly blurred.

The sound of sliding stones dislodged me from my thoughts. Andy Parkin, my friend and climbing partner, was nearing the col; Marcel de Letter, a likeable Belgian who we had met for the first time just a few days earlier, was not far below him.

‘What’s it look like?’ Andy shouted as he started the traverse towards the col.

‘We won’t be going any further.’ Nothing on this trip had been going to plan. Stopping short of the summit would simply add to our growing list of trials.

Andy and Marcel took cursory glances at the ground above before throwing down their packs and huddling beside me. They too donned extra clothing before digging out food and drink from their rucksacks. We sat in silence, heads bowed from the gusting wind, and ate our lunch.

It was not only the world that was changing. My own personal circumstances had altered fundamentally less than three years earlier when I had become a father. Far below us in a sheltered bay lay Marcel’s yacht, Iorana, in which we had sailed to this isolated place. On board were my wife Jane and our two young children, Maisy and Lewis.

There are lots of familiar expressions to describe the emotions of becoming a parent. For me, the overriding feeling was one of love, mixed with responsibility. It is patently obvious when a newborn arrives that they are going to depend on you for everything for a considerable time. My immediate concern was material provision: I had to become much more focused on making money. But children also have pressing emotional needs. Logic would suggest I should have eased up on the risky activity of mountaineering; but I was late coming to fatherhood and my path was already firmly fixed. My pastime was also my job. Life became a complex juggling act between trips away and time at home, between work and family.

In fact, what happened was hardly a gentle compromise. As my work and personal life became busier, the decade also evolved into the most productive and rewarding of my mountain life.