Heinrich Harrer, a swashbuckling explorer who told of his magical life of conquering the world's highest peaks and tutoring the young Dalai Lama when Tibet seemed as exotic as Mars, only to have news of his Nazi past mar his final years, died Jan. 7 in Friesach, Austria. He was 93.

The Associated Press said his family announced his death in a hospital there, saying only that "in great peace, he carried out his final expedition."

Mr. Harrer's wanderings rivaled the fictional exploits of the film hero Indiana Jones. He was a member of the four-man team that made the first ascent of the formidable north wall of the Eiger, a 13,400-foot peak of the Bernese Alps in Switzerland. He escaped from a British prisoner-of-war camp, then hiked across the high Tibetan plateau, dodging bears, leopards and bandits before arriving in the forbidden city of Lhasa, gloveless and with his shoes in tatters.

As a youth, he was one of the fastest downhill skiers in the world, and after his Tibetan adventure, he led path-breaking expeditions to Alaska, the Andes and the Mountains of the Moon in Uganda, as well as the far reaches of the Amazon. Later, in New Guinea, he survived a 130-foot plunge over a waterfall and the attentions of headhunters. (He carried no gun, a result of the nonviolent Buddhism he learned from the Dalai Lama.)