Part 1 of 2
Trip dates: 15 January – 4 February, 2023
Trip participants: Nick Brown, Nick Hindley
Three weeks based out of El Chaltén, climbing in the Patagonia’s Fitz Roy Range – a place that needs no introduction. The weather here is notoriously fickle and poses the foremost constraint for many undertakings in these mountains. This trip report was co-written by Nick Brown and myself. We are both named Nick, so you can read this from the perspective of whomever you like, and it will still make sense.
January 15: Arrival
We arrived in El Chaltén just in time for the first solid weather window in a couple weeks – clear skies, warm temperatures, and declining winds. Nevertheless, the winds in El Chaltén were still note-worthy; I lost my hat within 10 minutes of getting off the bus. In all honesty, we wouldn’t have minded a couple more days of poor weather to get settled in and recoup from the long travel days we just had. But the mountains are calling, and I must slog. With great haste, Nick and I immediately loaded up our bags with a week of supplies in preparation to hike into Val Torre the following morning.
Aguja Saint-Exupéry. Powerful dyke can be seen like a sharpie line across the entire feature.
January 16 – 17: Val Torre Approach
The conditions of the Torre Glacier were completely unbeknown to us, so we were prepared to head out with full mountaineering boots, crampons, and ice axe for the approach. Fortunately, before leaving the hostel we were given some crucial beta, regarding the bone-dry conditions of the glacier. We were extremely relived to ditch the crampons and axe, and set off in just light approach shoes instead. The approach to our Torre Valley base camp took us 1.5 days with a combined 10 hours of hiking. We bivied at Polacos camp, situated on a bench beneath the Aguja Poincenot and Saint-Exupéry. The views of Cerro Torre’s 2000m relief across the valley were spectacular.
In such a big landscape, the merits of the fast and light approach, over our heavier basecamp strategy, were very apparent. The valley bottom is just too far away from the base of the walls. In this kind of terrain it makes much more sense to forego the luxuries, like a tent, and constantly shift camp each night to be best poised for any given objective in the area. Still, we appreciated playing cards in the cool shade of the tent, before turning in early for tomorrow’s alpine start.
January 18: Chiaro Di Luna (6b+, 750m), Aguja Saint-Exupéry
We left Polacos at 03:00 and meandered up 600m of scree and slabs through the dark to reach the base of route at 05:00 – on the way, passing a couple of parties bivied among the boulders, just beginning to stir from their sleeping bags. Akin to the stairs of Cirith Ungol, an incredibly prominent dyke leads you high and steep to the start of the route’s real business. We started climbing just behind a blazing fast and stoic pair of climbers from Chamonix. Within a couple hours they were so far ahead of us that we could no longer slipstream and had to take on more of the route-finding ourselves. This was urgent work since no fewer than 15 people had similarly chosen to climb Chiaro Di Luna that same day and were beginning to queue up behind us. Nick and I motored up the route as quickly as possible and mostly avoided a bottleneck. At one point while following a crux pitch, I had a strong Italian climber leading less than 30cm off my heels. If I blew it there, he would have been sailing. I found the crux of the route to be the upper 6b; a steep, thin crack that took a couple of blind 0.2’s for pro, which I was glad Nick had taken the reigns for. Three final pitches of burly chimneys topped off the 750m of fairly sustained 5.10 climbing.
The secret stair. Same dyke as noted above.
A final pitch of low-5th ridgeline led to the summit. Now 17:00, and with several hours of challenging rappels ahead of us, it was decided that this would be our turnaround point – one long pitch shy of the true summit. Six hours of (occasionally nerve-wracking) rappels dropped us into the gulley between Aguja Saint-Exupéry and Rafael Juarez just as darkness began to set in. As we descended into the night, we could see the headlamps of the parties behind us still high on the wall. Navigating that complex vertical face in search of the right nest of ratty rap tat, by headlamp, seemed wholly undesirable. We felt contented in our decision to affix a small asterisk to our ascent, in favour of being done with the most dangerous part of the day before the sun was lost. We made it back to camp by 01:30 – about 23 hours after setting out the prior night.
We arrived back at the same time as two Alaskan climbers that had shared the route with us. Earlier when we had bumped into them, they were stopped on a ledge to brew up some tea, patiently giving other parties space to lead the crux pitch. I thought that was cool of them. Having to share a serious alpine route with so many other parties can be a recipe for chaos, but I thought they set a good example that being a strong climber sometimes means you can chill and brew tea mid-route, instead of blitzing past people and leaving a mess of crossed ropes and frustrated parties in your wake.
January 19 – 21: Deproach and downtime
We slept in as long as we could bear, before the heat of the morning sun eventually coaxed us out of the tent. An InReach message warned of incoming weather. Rather than take our chances waiting out a Patagonian storm, we decided to call it and begin our hike out that day. After hours of steep side-hilling, a tyrollean across Río Fitz Roy acts as gatekeeper from the masses of hikers gathered at Laguna Torre. From here, we hiked out pleasant trails to complete our retreat back to El Chaltén.
Upon arriving back to town, we learned that the lives of two Basque climbers had been claimed during this weather window. Swept into a crevasse by avalanche on descent from Cerro Fire Roy. The season’s toll was brought to four.
Ultimately the imposing weather never came to materialize and clear skies prevailed for another 3 days. Rather than pass up more fine climbing weather, Nick and I rested for one day and then decided to head out into the mountains again.
January 22: Cara Este (6a, 450m), Aguja de l’S
The decision was to climb Aguja de l’S (that’s a lowercase “L”, not a capital “I”, by the way; so the spire is Aguja de “[le ess]”) in a big day trip from El Chaltén. About 30km distance and 2000m vertical gain in all. We left town around 04:45 and got into the high pampas in time for a spectacular sunrise view of Cerro Fitz Roy. By 10:00 we reached the route and after some messing around at the moat managed to get climbing on the spire’s East Ridge. Most of the climb is easy, and we got up to the final pitch below the summit around 13:15. Nick led the final pitch. Just a few meters shy of the true summit a foot hold exploded, sending him on a 4m whipper down the face, flipped upside down as the rope came taught on a good cam. He was quick to shake it off and finish the pitch via an easier option. When I arrived at the belay and asked him if he was alright from the fall, Nick casually responded with something along the lines of;
“Oh yeah it was alright. But I think I shat my pants.”
“Really??”
“I’m not sure. Maybe.”
Sometimes a fall just whips it out of you. I nodded and didn’t pursue the topic further. Winds howled from the northwest and threatened to whip our ropes into spaghetti as we beefed up some uninspiring rap tat at the summit. On the last rope pull our ropes snagged. Nick dropped down to the ground ahead of me to deal with his apparent situation – which was verified by a frustrated “Uuuugh, nooo!” that I overheard from above. I busied myself soloing around to free the stuck ropes, while Nick went on a search for some chunks of snow to desecrate.We dropped back onto the glacier at 16:15, and made it back to El Chaltén by 20:30, just in time to catch our friends for a much-needed late Argentinian dinner.
January 23 – 29: Downtime and gear cache
The massif became steeped in cloud, affording us a few days of downtime in El Chaltén. There was great company to be had at our hostel, and many $3 bottles of Argentinian red wine were shared. Before long though, schemes began to hatch in preparation for the clouds eventual departure. On the January 27th, a lull in the storm was forecast. Nick and I spent the day hiking up to Piedra Negra camp to stash gear for our next objective. We were happy with our pace for the 6 hour round trip from the trailhead, and we were fortunate to quickly get picked up hitch hiking back into town. The driver was from Vancouver, of all places.
When we returned, the Asado at Hugo’s hostel was just getting started. Climbers from around town gathered for the Argentinian style roast; a celebration for the last night in El Chaltén for a few friends from the hostel. Our in-house DJ from Germany set up lights and a DJ booth in the doorway of one of Hugo’s cabañas, which kept us partying late into the night.
Continued in part 2 here: https://www.ubc-voc.com/2024/01/15/a-first-foray-in-patagonia-pt-2-2
Anyone have any tips for making these photos not display blurry? They are high res but the preview is always poor.
Might actually be helpful to upload a less high-res version? Not sure what you have now, but anything >1440pxW is wasted on most contemporary web displays, and 1080 is usually as good as is needed for everyone viewing on a laptop. I don’t know the webdev side of things, but on the photo end were told to size to web ourselves so that the website doesn’t have to/get to make decisions about downsampling the image for display at a smaller size (as this can result in artifacting/blurriness).
Edit: Yeah, these are ~4,000pxW, downsampling in photoshop/lightroom where you have more control and a better program at work might help
Good to know for next time. Thanks for the feedback!
That’s some serious climbing! Nice photos. After the Nick Gobin/Matwyuk VOC duo of ~10 years ago, we have a new Nick adventure duo! Maybe we need a new “Nick-Nick” VOC award for the advernture parternship of the year ;).