The Sea & The Snow by Philip Temple, Lodestar Books, £10, lodestarbooks.com
In the world of small-craft seafaring and modern mountaineering, 1964/5 seems very distant. Philip Temple’s remarkable work The Sea & The Snow, recently republished, brings those days straight to our bunk-side bookshelves. In its pages Temple tells us the tale of 10 men who sail from Australia to Heard Island far to the south-east of Kerguelen in the farthest wastes of the Southern Ocean. Their vessel is the 63ft steel schooner Patanela; their skipper none other than the redoubtable HW Tilman; their goal, to make the first ascent of the 9,000ft volcanic peak, Big Ben. Getting five men ashore, with full expedition gear, on a shingle beach exposed to mighty swells is a chancy business, but using an inflatable military assault craft, the climbers make it ashore and achieve their goal. Re-boarding the schooner proves an even greater challenge, and we join the shore party on the beach, contemplating a grim future.
Could we go? Should we go? Could we wait? Arguments, discussions, perusal of the sea filled every spare moment between packing and radio schedules. Little of our situation was conveyed to the crew away on
