Two Mountains and a River: I Made a Resolve Not to Begin Climbing Until Assured by a Plague of Flies That Summer Had Really Come (H.W. Tilman: The Collected Edition, Band 9) - Softcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

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 sailedMischief 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.

Gerda Pauler was born in the late 1950s outside Munich and soon found out that she had inherited her mother’s passion for adventure. Whereas her female friends spent all their money on stylish clothes, she used hers for rucksacks, sleeping bags and travelling. However, she was almost thirty years old before she set out on her first trip to Nepal, and it was then that she developed a genuine love for the mountains. Now, twenty-five years later, she looks back at countless trips to the Himalaya and Central Asia – and knows that she will never get tired of visiting the area. She is the author of Great Himalaya Trail (Bâton Wicks, 2013). Dolpo: People and Landscape is her second book.