Our epic journey started in Jackson Hole, Wyoming (still my favourite resort to this day) on January 1, 1994. Only 364 days to go! We were petrified of putting a foot wrong in case we suffered the embarrassment of breaking something in the very first week of our travels. As we moved through Wyoming, Idaho, California, Nevada and Oregon, we tried just to ski the easy runs, but gradually we threw caution to the wind and started venturing into more challenging terrain.

Perhaps we were inspired to be less wimpish by a chance encounter with Clint Eastwood at Sun Valley, Idaho, who was fascinated by our plans for Chile and Argentina. Three weeks later, at Apex resort in British Columbia, we were invited to ski quite a severe “chute” (couloir) called “Make My Day”. We closed our eyes and thought of Mr Eastwood (who would later pay me the immense compliment of writing the forward to the book I wrote about our trip). From then on, we skied the steep and deep whenever we felt brave enough.

After nine weeks in the Andes and 17 ski areas, which turned out to be our favourite part of the trip, we moved on to Australia and New Zealand for another nine weeks. We skied anywhere and everywhere that was open, including seven somewhat primitive but hugely enjoyable traditional “club fields”, before returning to the Rockies for the final two months.

To make sure we skied every single day – even on days when we had early or long flights – we got into the habit of skiing first thing in the morning (or even during the night) to make sure we skied every 24 hours, just in case we had a puncture or worse before we’d managed to ski.

In April, we found ourselves in the precipitous French ski area of La Grave – a name which still jerks at my heartstrings because of what happened there a year later, three months after our great adventure had ended. But that’s another story. On this earlier occasion, a local guide had suggested that I should ski a fearsome run called the Pan de Rideau (The Curtain’s Edge).

Luckily Lucy did not ski it with us. Brave a skier as she was, her technique wasn’t quite up to it. As it turned out, even I was terrified. With Lucy waiting anxiously way below us, unable to see the drama taking place high above her, I had mentally frozen on a terribly steep traverse we needed to cross to get to the run itself.

Later I told FT readers: “I was stranded like a disorientated mountain goat on the edge of a snowy chasm. Spring avalanches thundered off the sun-baked shoulders of the mighty Meije (mountain). The terrifying traverse…was above two or three precipitous couloirs… hundreds of feet below. I knew that one slip would result in certain death…”

“I pictured myself tumbling hopelessly…bouncing off one cliff after another, until I reached a frozen grave thousands of feet below…This was coming face to face with the inner demons which haunt all skiers who mix skiing with mountaineering.”

But it was Llaima that turned out to be the nadir of our trip when we were faced with a 54km drive along flooded, unpaved roads to its foothills late at night in torrential rain in a hastily acquired truck. It was Saturday July 23. Every local taxi company had refused to take us there because of the floods. We had no transport of our own – our borrowed Russian truck had broken down in Argentina, necessitating a 500km tow by four different breakdown vehicles back to Chile for repairs. And we hadn’t skied that day!

But after more than 200 days of non-stop skiing, we weren’t about to give up. We took it in turns to ski a miserly mile or so each, while whoever was not skiing lit up the rough mountain track with the hired truck headlights. We’d have to make up the missing nine miles of our compulsory daily average another time. This was our closest call.

Had we failed to negotiate the floods and steer past abandoned cars our mission would have failed. There was no other mountain within range. I told Lucy that if necessary, I’d have swum the floodwaters to the volcano slopes with my skis perched on my shoulder. “You sound like, Tintin” she had giggled. But I meant it.

Our last day was spilt between the three US ski resorts that had sponsored us. A tour bus took us from one resort to the other, accompanied by various friends, supporters and colleagues. Rather embarrassingly, we all wore Arnie and Lucy masks (a marketing department idea…). In Copper Mountain we skied with virtually the resort’s entire ski patrol.

In Breckenridge, to our further embarrassment, we were crowned “King and Queen of skiing”. And in Keystone, as we skied our last runs – Flying Dutchmen, then River Run – we were served toasted teacakes (very British) and serenaded by Jim Salestrom plus guitar, who had entertained at the White House.

And that was it. We’d made it.

Postscript: Tragically, Lucy was killed in a skiing accident while skiing with me and friends in La Grave, France the following April – in one of the very couloirs I’d looked down to from the traverse into the Pan de Rideau. It was a cruel twist of fate after we had both tried to help each other avoid injury for so long during our great adventure. I wrote about it in “Tears in the Snow” which was later published in paperback as “Ski the World”. With that foreword I mentioned earlier by Clint Eastwood.

Almost two years after the accident, it was my great good fortune to meet Vivianne, a Swedish girl who rescued me from the very dark place I was still inhabiting. We were married in Jackson Hole, Wyoming in 2000.

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