Born in Ceylon and educated in England it was in Kenya where he first discovered his passion for climbing and his first climbing partners. Shipton was involved with most of the Mount Everest expeditions during the ’30s and together with Tilman, they discovered the access route to the Nanda Devi sanctuary through the Rishi Ganga gorge and explored and mapped the North and West area of K2.

During the ’40s he served as a British diplomat in Persia, Hungary and as Consul General in the Sinkiang region of China, taking advantage of this situation to attempt the climbing of Mustagh Ata of 7546 metres.

Due to political intrigue and different ideas and styles of climbing Shipton was ousted from the leadership of the 1953 expedition to Mt. Everest.
Disappointed, he turned his eyes to Patagonia, and in so doing he changed the vertical limits for traverse exploration. In 1960-61 and after some exploration and reconnoitre, he makes the first north-to-south crossing of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field from the Jorge Montt Glacier to Lago Argentino via the Upsala Glacier: 210km in 48 days and using sledges as a mean of cargo transportation for the first time.