In addition to developing his PhD thesis in Oxford, he specialized as mountain instructor at the National School for Outdoor Activities of Great Britain. He was awarded the Irvine Travel Award, given by Oxford University to the best expedition of the year, for his expedition to Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro, in Africa. On May 15, 1992, he led the first South American group who reached the peak of Everest (8,848 m / 29,029 ft), the highest mountain in the world. This experience was vital on his professional development, since the idea of creating Vertical S.A. was born there. The route they took was on the east face, known as the Kangshung face – that given its extreme difficulty, it has only been climbed 4 times as of 2018. In 1996, he led another successful Chilean expedition, this time to K2, in the Karakoram range. This was the first integral ascent of the South-SouthEast ridge. Between November 2002 and January 2003, he led a scientific-sporting expedition to Antárctica. During 54 days and without any external support, they covered 400 kilometers of unexplored mountain terrain, and collected valuable ice and rock samples for scientific research on Antarctica. Also in 2003, he made possible the first educational expedition for the MBA program of the Wharton School to Patagonia. Later, in May 2004, he led his fourth expedition to Everest guiding it by the Khumbu Glacier route and placing nine climbers on the peak. Among the members of that team stands Andrónico Luksic Craig, one of the owners of the Luksic group, a leading business conglomerate in Latin America. In May 2006, he conducted another successful expedition to the fourth highest mountain in the world, Lhotse ( 8,516 m / 27,940 ft) He placed eleven climbers on the peak and aimed to celebrate the contribution of Professor Claudio Lucero to the development of mountaineering and outdoor education in Chile. In January 2008, he participated in the National Geographic Society and the New York's Explorer Club expedition to Antarctica. During six weeks, they explored on kayaks the west part of the Antarctic Peninsula to record and evaluate the effects of climate change in that continent. That same year, he led an expedition that included kayak and hiking to Greenland, also meant to record the effects of climate change on the north ice. In May 2012, to celebrate the 20 years of the first South-American ascent to Everest, he led an expedition with young climbers on the normal route through Nepal.