Expeditions
Chapman was attached as "ski expert and naturalist" to Gino Watkins' 1930–31 British Arctic Air-Route Expedition and a subsequent Greenland Expedition in 1932–33. These were his happiest years. He experienced cold of such intensity that he lost all his finger and toe nails. He spent twenty hours in a storm at sea in his kayak and at one point fell into a deep crevasse, saving himself by holding onto the handles of his dog sled. He emerged from the Greenland expeditions to be amongst the toughest of men. He later led a three man team across the desolate Greenland ice-cap. The first European to do this since Nansen, he was fluent in Inuit and was an able Inuit Kayaker and dog sledger. He was awarded the Polar Medal for his participation in the first expedition. He fathered a son by an Inuit girl but the child died a year later.
In between the Greenland Expeditions he took part in the Fell run, 130 miles (209.2 km) and 30,000 feet (9,100 m) of climbing, his time of 25 hours was not however a record.
It was clear that Gino Watkins moulded an extraordinary esprit de corps in his expeditions, and the expedition members were a strange mixture of military intelligence (MI) officers, hard nuts, and rather fay Cambridge misfits. Many of the members would go on to do extraordinary things in the war. These members included Martin Lindsay, Augustine Courtauld and Chapman himself.
In 1935, he went to Lapland, and had "an exciting" expedition on skis with a reindeer called Isaac, which he eventually sold to a butcher.
Early in 1936, he joined a Himalayan climbing expedition. He was not only a keen mountaineer but studied the history of mountaineering, Dr Kellas being amongst his heroes. He enjoyed his difficult climbs and achieved peaks and met Basil Gould, the Political Officer for Sikkim, Bhutan and Tibet. Gould invited Spencer to be his private secretary on his political mission, from July 1936 to February 1937, to persuade the Panchen Lama to return from China and establish permanent British representation in Lhasa. Spencer struggled to learn Tibetan, learning it well enough to converse. He was involved in cypher work, kept a meteorological log, pressed six hundred plants, dried seeds, and made notes on bird life. He kept a diary of "events" in Lhasa and took many photographs that were sent to India on a weekly basis. He was allowed to wander and did so in an unshepherded way into the middle of Tibet and around the Holy City.
After his return from Lhasa, Chapman obtained permission to lead a five-man expedition from Sikkim to the holy mountain Chomolhari, which the British group had passed on the way from Sikkim to Tibet in July 1936. Chapman and Sherpa Passang Dawa Lama succeeded to become the first mountaineers to climb the 7314 m high peak, which they finally reached from the Bhutanese side after finding the route from the Tibetan side impassable. The mountain would not be climbed again until 1970.
In 1938 Spencer taught at Gordonstoun School where Prince Philip was one of his pupils.
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