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Patagonia January 06 6-Feb-2006 At 5:23:08 AM Robb

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Just waiting for a plane in El Calafate, Argentina now so thought i´d write a brief trip report.
Johnny and I left Australia on Xmas morning on our way to Argentina and arrived in the evening of the same day in Bariloche, a beautiful town surrounded by mountains and perched on the edge of a massive lake. We headed up to a beautiful valley in the mountains commonly known as Frey (named after the Refugio hut that is there).

The climbing consists of a combination of crack and face climbing on beautiful granite spires up to a few hundred metres high. The access to the climbs ranges from 10 minutes to 2 hours for the more distant spires. The camping is great next to the lake or near the Refugio, where it is not as sheltered. The Refugio Frey is a great place to hang out on evenings and during bad weather. Food and beer can be bought for very reasonable prices. The weather was generally perfect, almost too hot, but there are always options in the shade or the sun. We climbed almost everyday on many of the different spires including the more impressive Campanile Esloveno and the Aguja Principal spires which dominate the two main climbing valleys.

Next destination was the Fitzroy massif in southern Patagonia. After buying all our food in El Calafate, travelling to El Chalten and establishing ourselves in Rio Blanco base camp, we waited for a good weather spell.

The first weather window was a short one so we decided on trying the Whillan's route on the Poincenot (aka Pignot). An early start from the high camp saw us at the base of the route behind the fast moving party of Shingo and Dan. These guys were moving incredibly quickly up the 60-80 degree snow ramp that makes up the first half of the route. Suddenly one of the headlamps fell a long way down the face. the boys had been simul climbing and Shingo had reached one of the fixed anchors on the ramp, planted his ice axes and proceeded to clip his daisy chain into the sling and cord which was threaded though the pitons. Shingo weighted the anchor and found himself falling through a snowfield covered in rocks. Dan and Shingo had been climbing with 70 metres of rope between them and 2 pieces were clipped between them. the resulting fall was about 90 metres as Shingo ended up about 20 metres below Dan who had plenty of time to brace himself for the fall. The three parties below them on the route assisted in the rescue that followed. Shingo was pretty beat up and covered in blood after being unconscious for about 10 minutes. He was flown out by helicopter from base camp and returned about 10 days later still hurting but without and serious injuries. A very lucky guy I concluded after witnessing the fall and the terrain he fell through on our way up the route a few weeks later.

This accident signalled the end of the trip for Johny after suffering an inflamed tendon for the past week and it became too painful to wear boots.

I teamed up with an Alaskan guy called Charlie Sassara and about a week later attempted the Franco-Argentine route on Fitzroy. Charlie had to make a quick detour into El chalten to retrieve a lost wallet and return in the early morning. We headed up to the Paso Superior high camp in the early hours of the morning and continued up to the base of the route to climb the 6 pitch mixed gully called the Bretcha. After a bivvy at the Bretcha, we headed up the route.

The beautiful compact granite was amazing to climb but the conditions were less than ideal. Most of the cracks had some ice in them and most of them were dripping wet with verglas ice often covering the rock. Every pitch was a challenge and the conditions difficult. At one point, I was waiting for Charlie at a belay that was in the middle of a waterfall. I used the laminated topo held over my head for protection from the water.
Many of the ledges were covered in snow and I often had to kick steps in the snow with my rock shoes. 11 pitches and 14 hours in rock shoes later it was 11pm. We opted to bivvy and continue the one remaining technical pitch and remaining summit slope in the morning.

This night would prove to be the coldest night of my life. We had no bivvy gear except a synthetic belay jacket each and a Jetboil stove. We were both wearing only a light thermal underwear layer and Schoeller soft-shell climbing pants. The ledge was snow covered and about a metre wide. We cut our one square foam sit mat into 2 pieces to stand on and started doing squats to keep warm. I think we must have done about 3000 squats over the course of the night each.

At around midnight, the black clouds blocked out the lights of El Chalten in the distance and snow started to fall. We were about 100 vertical metres below the summit and very exposed. We were constantly being bombarded with ice and spindrift funnelling down the route and at around 3 am decided to head down to the previous ledge where it might be more sheltered. It proved to be much worse and exposed so we continued down the mountain. Visibility was at best about 5 metres and the anchors were difficult to find in the dark gloom of night. We went off course and ended up in the wrong dihedral system at one point and had to execute some big pendulums to get back on course.

We ended up back at the Bretcha at midday and continued down to the high camp and BC which we reached about 8pm. We had been awake for about 40 hours and felt a little destroyed. We had eaten about 8 Carbo Shotz gels, a few energy bars and other goodies on the climb and still somehow had some energy left.

The welcoming back into the Rio Blanco by our friends there was warm and amazing. We had formed a great bond with all the climbers at Base camp and it was great to see everyone after the adventure.

Thankfully it stormed for the next few days and we were able to recuperate for a few days. This storm managed to coat Fitz in a massive layer of ice and snow.

A few days later, the Innsbruck weather report from the Huber brothers indicated a few days of marginally good but windy weather. We headed up for an attempt on Fitzroy but turned around a few pitches into the approach gully due to unstable unconsolidated snow over the rock.

A day later at 2am, Charlie and I left high camp for an attempt on the Whillan’s Route on Poincenot. The first half of the route consisted of a 65-80 degree snow ramp interspersed with rock sections leading to the crux mixed pitch that leads to the shoulder on the route. We managed to score great conditions on the ramp in the early morning chill and were on the shoulder by about 10 am with a combination of simul climbing and pitching the 500m ramp.

The second half of the route consisted of about 10 pitches of mixed icy rock with some quite convoluted route finding. The climbing involved some fairly spicy climbing up iced chimneys and cracks and some really absorbing climbing. We topped out about 6pm in increasing wind and prepared for the descent. As luck would have it, the rope became hopelessly stuck on the first rap and we had to relead the pitch. We kept rapping through the night and arrived at the high camp at around 7 am in the morning. We had been on the go for about 29 hours.

After a few hours sleep we headed back to BC for the last time on the trip. Then down to El Chalten for the best steaks in the world.