Patagonia - Images of a Wild Land (Hardcover, illustrated edition)

This book by Australian photographer David Neilson, contains a superb collection of photographs featuring the spectacular Andean regions of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego in southern South America. Cerro Torre, Fitz Roy, and the Torres del Paine are among the peaks featured in the photographs in both colour and black & white duotone. The text contains brief essays on the exploration, climbing history and natural history and a longer account of an expedition that sailed a yacht from Scotland to the Strait of Magellan, climbed in western Tierra del Fuego and then made a crossing of the Southern Patagonian Ice-cap.

By midnight the storm had developed into a full-scale blizzard. As the only objects brazen enough to stand in its path, we felt as though the wind was making us the focal point of its efforts. It swept at near-hurricane strength across the ice-cap and blasted our tent with a million icy particles. Its power was awesome. At any moment we expected it to uproot our camp and send us hurtling across the ice like minuscule pucks on a giant's skating rink.

The constant icy barrage, the violent flapping of the tent walls and the screaming of the wind allowed little sleep. Each time there was a slight easing we braced ourselves, waiting as the wind gathered momentum before unleashing its next furious blast, direct from the southern ocean. At times we cursed our antarctic-style pyramid tent for its excessive weight, but it was now our most treasured possession. Its strong design sheltered us from the storm as no other tent would have.

It was a long night. Weak grey light eventually filtered its way through the thick canvas walls, signalling the dawn. But there was little let-up inthis wildest of Andean storms. We were camped in the Paso de los Cuatro Ventisqueros 'Pass of the Four Glaciers' in the centre of the Southern Patagonian Ice-cap. The storm cleared several days later, and one of the most dramatic mountain panoramas anywhere greeted us. Across the flat expanse of the ice-cap lay the spectacular western faces of Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy, peaks rich in mountaineering saga and myth.

It was mid-April 1978, autumn, and late in the year to be roaming the ice-cap. I was accompanied by two Scottish climbers, Douglas Anderson and William Jeffrey. We had reached this remote corner of the southern Patagonian Andes by sailing a yacht from Edinburgh down the Atlantic to the Strait of Magellan and then continuing to the western channels. After climbing onto the western edge of the ice-cap we hauled a sledge across the ice to our present position. For the three of us it was a mountain journey without parallel.