Wiltsie’s mountaineering background includes many notable climbs and ski explorations in the western USA, Himalaya, South America and Antarctica. He has also led numerous Himalayan cultural treks and mountaineering expeditions, including a pioneer three-person winter ski crossing from Ladakh to Kashmir, during which he had to rescue himself after breaking his back in an avalanche. His recent focus has been guiding and photographing some of the first-ever private groups, expeditions and film crews to fly deep into the Antarctic interior.

Some of his recent assignments include a two-month expedition to an unknown mountain range in the storm bound fjords of Chile (National Geographic Magazine, April 1994); and a pioneering exploration of Tibet's fabled and long-forbidden Tsangpo River Gorge (covered in Men's Journal). In 1994, he photographed and guided 88-year old Norman Vaughan up a remote Antarctic mountain that explorer Richard Byrd named after Vaughan in the 1930's (Life Magazine, May 1995) and in 1995 he photographed Will Steger's trans-polar dogsled journey from Siberia to Canada (National Geographic, January 1996). The cover story of National Geographic's February 1998 issue presented a big-wall climbing expedition to Antarctica's little known Queen Maud Land which Gordon both led and photographed. His most recent project was photographing another National Geographic sponsored big-wall climbing expedition, this time to the spectacular Stewart Valley on Baffin Island.