Bill Tilman

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Major Harold William "Bill" Tilman, CBE, DSO, MC & Bar (14 February 1898–1977) was a mountaineer & explorer, famous for his Himalayan climbs & sailing voyages.

Early years & Africa
Tilman was born on 14 February 1898 in Wallasey in Cheshire, the son of a well-to-do sugar merchant & educated at Berkhamsted Boys school. At the age of 18, Tilman joined the British Army & fought in the First World War, including the Battle of the Somme, & was twice awarded the Military Cross for bravery. His climbing career, however, began with his acquaintance with Eric Shipton in Kenya, East Africa, where they were both coffee growers. Beginning with their joint traverse of Mount Kenya in 1929 & their ascents of Kilimanjaro & the fabled "Mountains of the Moon" Ruwenzori, Shipton & Tilman formed one of the most famed partnerships in mountaineering history. When it came time to leave Africa, Tilman was not content with merely flying home but rode a bicycle across the continent to the West Coast where he embarked for England.

World War II
He later volunteered for service in the Second World War, seeing action in North Africa, & on the beaches at Dunkirk. He then was dropped by parachute behind enemy lines to fight with Albanian & Italian partisans, was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his efforts, & the keys to the city of Belluno which he helped save from occupation & destruction.

Asian mountaineering
Tilman was involved in two of the 1930s Mount Everest expeditions - participating in the 1935 Reconnaissance Expedition, & reaching 27,200 feet without oxygen as the expedition leader in 1938. He penetrated the Nanda Devi sanctuary with Eric Shipton in 1934, & in 1936 he went on to lead an Anglo-American expedition to Nanda Devi. With the support of a team which included Peter Lloyd & H. Adams Carter, Tilman & Noel Odell succeeded in making the first ascent of the mountain, which remained the highest summit climbed by man until 1950.

In 1939, Tilman was the first man to attempt climbing in the remote & unexplored Assam Himalaya, exploring the Southern approaches of Gori Chen, 6538 metres, before his team succumbed to malaria. In 1947 he attempted Rakaposhi, then made his way to Kashgar to join up with Eric Shipton in a lightweight attempt on Muztagh Ata, 7546 metres, which nearly succeeded. On his way back to India, he detoured through Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor to see the source of the river Oxus. During his extensive exploration of the areas of Langtang, Ganesh & Manang in Nepal in 1949, Tilman was the first to ascend Paldor, 5896 metres, & found the pass named after him beyond Gangchempo.

Sailing
Following his military career behind enemy lines in the Second World War, Tilman took up deep sea sailing. Sailing in deep seas on the cutter Mischief, which he purchased in 1954, & subsequently on his other pilot cutters "Sea Breeze" & "Baroque", Tilman voyaged to Arctic & Antarctic waters in search of new & uncharted mountains to climb. Tilman disappeared during a sailing trip to climb Smith Island in the Antarctic in 1977. He had accompanied the youthful Simon Richardson & his crew aboard an old, converted steel tug. They made it successfully & without incident to Rio de Janeiro, but disappeared without trace on their way to the Falkland Islands. Tilman was almost eighty years of age.

Assessment
He has been described by some as a self-indulgent risk-taker impervious to the sensitivities of others; one who had little time for those who didn’t live up to his high standards & expectations; & he was even accused of disliking women. In reality, these labels were grossly inaccurate, for he was in fact a very shy, private man who was self-effacing & hated publicity. He was a deep thinker, an avid reader of the classics, & although he never married, he adored his sister & two nieces with whom he lived when not on some distant shore. I think people should be sensitive to the feelings of others, whatever they are like, it it low to do anything else and pointless, so that is a bad thing if he was like that. Lets hope not, but if so, that is very bad and he should be condemmed for idiotic behaviour in that sense.

Tilman had a great sense of humour, perhaps too subtle for many of his listeners. It was one of his greatest joys to laugh at himself, & see the funny side of life's little foibles. An example is his 'discovery' of Tilman's Disease, characterized as "the inability to put one foot before the other". He wrote seven books about his mountain travels, & eight books on his years sailing to extreme climates. One of the last 'gentleman adventurers', Bill Tilman's stoic & courageous exploits have earned him a place of honour as one of the greatest in the pantheon of explorers.

Partial mountaineering timeline: 1929-1950
1929: Tilman is introduced to rock climbing in the Lake District of England.
1930: He ascends Mawenzi & almost ascends Kibo on Kilimanjaro, with Eric Shipton.
1930: He makes first ascent of West Ridge of Batian, & traverses to Nelion, with Shipton.
1932: Tilman ascends Mounts Speke, Baker, & Stanley in the Ruwenzori Range, with Shipton.
1932: In April, he is involved in an accident in the Lake District which leads to the death of J. S. Brogden.
1932: Later that year, he makes various climbs in the Alps.
1933: Tilman ascends Kilimanjaro (to summit) alone.
1934: Tilman & Shipton, with three others, make the first recorded entrance into the Nanda Devi Sanctuary. They also explore the nearby Badrinath Range.
1935: Tilman participates in the Mount Everest Reconnaissance Expedition, & climbs various peaks near Everest.
1936: Tilman attempts various peaks & passes, including the Zemu Gap, in Sikkim, near Kangchenjunga. Later, he leads the first ascent of Nanda Devi.
1937: Shipton & Tilman make a major reconnaissance & surveying expedition in the Karakoram.
1938: Tilman leads another Mount Everest Expedition; he & three others reach above 27,300 ft (8,320 m) but fail to reach the summit.
1938: He traverses the Zemu Gap.
1939: He leads an expedition in the remote Assam Himalaya, which ends in disaster. They attempt Gori Chen, but reach only the lower slopes. The party was ravaged by Malaria, causing the death of one member.
1941: Tilman climbs various peaks in Kurdistan.
1942: He makes a night ascent of Zaghouan, in Tunisia.
1947: Tilman leads an attempt on Rakaposhi which explores five different routes, none of which get near the summit. The expedition then explored the Kukuay Glacier on the southwest side of the Batura Muztagh.
1947: He attempts Muztagh Ata, with Shipton & Gyalgen Sherpa.
1948: Tilman attempts Bogda Feng, in northern Xinjiang, with Shipton & two others, but they only reach outlying summits.
1948: He attempts Chakragil, in western Xinjiang.
1948: He travels in the Chitral area of the Hindu Kush.
1949: Tilman leads a four-month exploratory & scientific expedition to the Langtang, Ganesh, & Jugal Himals in Nepal, in the early stages of that country's re-opening to outsiders. He climbs Paldor in the Ganesh Himal.
1950: He leads the British Annapurna Expedition, which gets close to the summit of Annapurna IV, & attempts other nearby peaks.
1950: Tilman & Charles Houston view Mount Everest from the lower slopes of Pumori, on the recently opened Nepalese side of the peak