Christopher Van Tilburg is an American physician and author specializing in emergency, wilderness, travel, environmental, occupational, and public health medicine. He is author of 11 books on outdoor recreation, wilderness medicine, and international travel, including two memoirs on mountain rescue Mountain Rescue Doctor: Wilderness Medicine in the Extremes of Nature and Search and Rescue: A Wilderness Doctor's Life-and-Death Tales of Risk and Reward.

Proudly South African, Ross was born and educated at the continent’s tip in Cape Town.  An avid outdoorsman with more than 20 years backcountry and mountaineering experience, Ross is most in his element in the rugged Cape Mountains, but a passion for adventure in wild places combined with his love of challenges has taken him from baking deserts to mountain peaks and frigid icecaps.  
 
Since qualifying from the University of Stellenbosch, his professional fields of interest have centred upon acute and critical care, trauma, anaesthesia, aeromedical, emergency and wilderness medicine.  He is a long-serving member of the mountain rescue team, Divemaster, and volunteer flight doctor for the Red Cross Air Mercy Service.  Ross has expedition experience from around the world, including serving as doctor and overwintering Expedition Leader for the South African National Antarctic Expedition.

Moose has nearly 4 decades of traditional and alternative education experience around the globe. He has course directed 58-day Outward Bound instructor trainings in Appalachia, been a deputy headmaster in the Kalahari Desert, managed a beach concession on the Mediterranean, slogged through Australian rain forests with middle school students, juggled as a street performer in too many cities to mention, has more than 2000 days of field instruction in a wilderness setting, spent four months as the Interim Head for an elite ski academy, and returned to Outward Bound to instruct a canoe program for Veterans on the Gulf of Mexico.

Since 2002 Moose has been a member and senior trainer of Yosemite Search and Rescue, working as a technician and within Incident Command, at one of the busiest SAR operations in the world. 

Moose has been the Lead Trainer for Family Liaison Officers for many national parks.