Peaks in the Cordillera Darwin, Tierra del Fuego and in Patagonia. Our yacht, the Eloisa, was a 60-foot, 34-ton ketch built of ferro cement and fitted with an 88-horse-power engine. It was built by the skipper, Ian Rennie, with the assistance of the expedition members. Other members were Ian Carr, Dick Pert, William Jeffrey, David Neilson, Wallace Rennie and I. We departed from Granton, near Edinburgh, on October 1, 1977. Our ports of call were Ramsgate, England; Figuera and Lisbon, Portugal; Las Palmas, Canary Islands; Porto Grande, Cape Verde Islands; and Rio de Janeiro. We experienced bad gales in the Bay of Biscay, off Recife and then almost continuously south of 40° S. Many sails were torn and the flooding of the engine room in mid-Atlantic had a long-term effect on the reliability of the engine. We arrived in Punta Arenas on February 7 after a 8000-mile voyage. We made our base in Tierra del Fuego near the head of Seno Hyatt, an arm of Seno Agostini. We explored a region northwest of that investigated by Jack Miller (A.A.J., 1967 pp 326-8). From February 25 to March 24 we operated from two camps, one in a large ice basin northeast of the head of Seno Hyatt, and the other on a col at 4500 feet above Brookes Fjord. We climbed all seven peaks above the basin, all to my knowledge virgin, the smallest being 4000 feet and the highest slightly over 6000 feet. On March 2 Neilson and I climbed a 600-foot ice face to reach the “Col Major”, the only feasible break in this cirque of peaks which gives access to the east and the main range. On March 17 a peak on the southern side of Seno Hyatt was climbed by Carr and W. Rennie. After leaving Tierra del Fuego, we sailed west through the Paso Inglés. We were able to climb an interesting peak on Península Brunswick close to Port Gallant, an old anchorage used by Fitzroy’s Beagle when surveying the straits. The summit rocks consisted of a 20-foot wall of beautiful quartz crystals. On August 15 we anchored at the head of Seno Exmouth to traverse the Southern Patagonian Icecap. Using skis and a light sledge Neilson, Jeffrey and I made the crossing from Río Trinidad via the Pass of the Four Glaciers to the Río Eléctrico, reaching Fitz Roy Park headquarters on April 30. We were thrown in jail for illegal entry into Argentina.

Douglas Anderson, Scotland