Patagonia 4: Aguja Medialuna

I didn't imagine that it would be so long before I made the time to get up this blog post. This is from the second-to-last climb that Neale and I did - we started with an unsuccessful attempt on a peak at the far back of the Fitzroy Group called Cerro Piergiorgio.

The Fitzroy Group makes a nice loop, where the peaks behind Fitzroy can be approached from either side of that mountain. We approached it via Niponino, because we had gear that we needed cached there. This is not the logical way to approach, and we don't recommend it. It all worked out in the end, though, as we did a very good rock climb called Rubio y Azul.

Cerro Torre means literally "mountain tower." Use that description to identify that peak. Then, look to the middle left for the flat-top mountain, which is El Mocho. To give you a sense of scale, the route we climbed ascends the left hand sky line of the ridge in the foreground of El Mocho. Aguja Medialuna is the first bump on the SE Ridge, leading directly to the summit of Cerro Torre.

A decent weather window appeared, long enough to go for Cerro Piergiorgio, an adventurous-sounding route that hadn't been done many times, but was not terribly difficult. Neale and I launched.

As usual, flowers and dead wood in the Torre Valley.

The Torre Valley.

The orange rock on the glacier is where the trail turns off the side moraine and onto the ice, to head up to the base of Cerro Torre. El Mocho is visible in the back.

Neale hoofs it onto the glacier. It was windy and raining.

We got a late start leaving Chalten, which meant that we didn't make it to Niponino before dark. We lucked out to find a spot on the moraine that was sheltered enough from the wind to camp in reasonable peace.

We passed by Niponino the following morning, and continued up to the head of the Torre Glacier.

It rained all damned day. We climbed the ice fall in the background of this photo, then camped around the corner of the black buttress above Neale's head.

Finding a sheltered spot to camp was tough. Finally, Neale identified this spot next to a boulder as a camp spot, but it needed to be dug out to be flat. I was cold and wet and sick of it and just wanted to get into the tent.
"I swear you just enjoy doing extra work," I bitched. "Let's just pitch it someplace else." We battled, and Neale dug this whole platform with his adze, which at the time seemed like an ordeal to me. Now, months later, I can admit it: he was right. It was good to have a spot sheltered from the wind. Happy now, Neale?

The Torre Group in the morning.

The weather looked alright.

It began to emerge later in the day. I took a lot of photos in 'painting' mode.

We ended up having to do a few pitches of time consuming technical climbing just to get up onto the upper glacier (going the other way around Fitzroy would have prevented this, but we had to get our gear cache). From the photo his looks objectively dangerous but technically benign, but for me it was the opposite - the hanger really wasn't that threatening (it doesn't actually overhang as it appears) and showed no signs of being active. But the moderate snow climbing was actually pretty steep, and I have a deep-seated fear of melting snow and unbonded ice. I was supposedly the rope gun for this kind of climbing, but I backed off at the lowest rock in the center of the photo when I couldn't get any pro. Neale went up, excavated, got pro, and then sent, saying that he thought the 60 degree thunker ice at the top of the pitch was the scariest part.  

I led one more pitch onto the upper glacier (see Neale pulling over the lip?) It was solid styrofoam until the move over the lip, which was soft snow above a sphincter-puckering runout. I think none of this climbing would be hard for someone who was used to that kind of climbing, but I never got comfortable figuring out what would hold my weight and what wouldn't.

Finally, late in the morning: Piergiorgio. Our planned route would go from the top of the right-hand snow cone to the big shoulder, then up the gash to the summit. We almost made it to the base of the snow slope cone. We could plainly tell that it was very windy (see the blowing snow at the horizon on the right-hand side of the photo?) The ice cap is on the other side of this mountain, and we obviously hadn't yet learned to pick sheltered objectives.

Self portrait on the glacier. I was feeling good about making it onto the glacier, and had no expectation of success on Piergiorgio - my climbing expectations for Patagonia were beginning to bottom out.

Can you identify the route known as "supercouloir" in this photo?

The were some Argentine climbers camped on the glacier - a much more reasonable place to camp.

The Fitzroy Massif. This is the cover photo of the Patagonia guide.

Neale makes his way up to the ridge where we would start climbing rock on Piergiorgio. It was really windy, and already around noon. It was only windy up here, and no where else.

Very windy.

Heading down, defeated again (it was going to be a pain-in-the-ass to cross the bergschrund to even get to the ridge, so with the wind, we didn't bother).

There are fixed rappels down a chossy (by Patagonia standards, anyway) gully that we used to get back down to the lower glacier. The raps are there for guided parties that circumnavigate Fitzroy.

Downclimbing.

We broke camp and walked back down to Niponino.

Walking down the glacier. We walked many miles of bare glacier, with countless streams running across the ice. The bigger ones looked like this.

In the morning, at Niponino. I wasn't ready to get out of the tent, so Neale took this picture and the next with my camera.

We knew we had one more day of good weather before the wind was supposed to pick up. We decided to go for a rock route right out of Niponino called "Rubio y Azul" on a peak called Aguja Medialuna, and then walk out the following day in the wind. Though Medialuna looks striking from below, it's really just the first bump on the SE Ridge of Cerro Torre. We hiked up there with our friend Alik, who is also in The Hostile with us in Chaltén. Alik was planning to rope solo. We were using double ropes and offered to let him tie in with us, but he is a hardman.

Starting out. Given our run of failures and weather-bails, I had very low expectations. I felt like I was just going through the motions and pretending to be excited about climbing. Also, in spite of appearances, the climbing here was not that great. In fact, the first four pitches were pretty underwhelming, including a wide section of overhanging 5.10+ choss, which was hard and unpleasant.

Across the valley - Fitzroy, Poincenot, San Rafael, Saint-Exupery.

Eventually Neale said "so are you going to lead a pitch, or what?" So I led this. It looks steep, but it wasn't. I was still just pretending that I enjoy rock climbing.

But all that indifference turned instantly into pure passion. We were in the sun, the wind was calm, and it was warm and beautiful Those peaks to the right are the Torre Group, with Cerro Torre on the left. 

I took the sharp end. This photo, and the next two, are all by Alik Berg.

El Mocho on the left.

The climbing was amazing. I yelled about how good it was all the way up this pitch - which was 5.8 perfect hands. It was perfect #2 Camalots for about 40 meters, but I only had two of them, which meant huge runouts. I am not bold, but I was also not the least bit scared. It was incredibly solid.

Suddenly, I realized why people climb in Patagonia.

Neale follows the first headwall pitch.

Neale takes off on a gorgeus 5.10- pitch.

The route enters the massive chimney above and to the left of Neale.

The shenanigans of rope soloing caused Alik to be behind us, ahead of us, behind us....
(photo by Alik Berg)

Me leading the next pitch, which had some fun and easy chimney shenanigans to get into the gaping maw. We both agreed at this point that things were oddly reminiscint of Honeymoon Chimney on the Priest in Moab.

Looking at Fitz from the belay inside the chimney.

Neale follows. My belay was on top of a chockstone.

Neale prepares to fire the crux pitch.

The chimney that contains this pitch is quite a sight from below - a massive gash in the rock face, where you can't see what the actual climbing will be like. It's rated 6c, which is about 5.11a or b. As Alik and I looked up from below while Neale was ahead somewhere, I speculated on what the nature of the climbing might be - a 5.11 chimney could be really hard.

"I don't know," Alik said. "I just know that you need a number four."

I paused.

"We don't have one. You need one?"

Alik laughed nervously.

I debated what to do. Neale and I weren't going to turn around, the pitch was always assumed to be Neale's lead, and we were clearly going to do it without the number four.

I just decided not to mention it.

(I gave a slideshow for the Alaska Alpine Club, who were really scraping the barrel for presenters, when I got back to Fairbanks. For the most part, I think the audience was with me - they laughed at a few of my quips and 'ooooooh'ed appropriately at the Specter of the Brocken photos from Poincenot, and all that. But when I told that story, I was met with appalled silence, save a gasp from somewhere in the back.)

Neale going for it.

He looks all cool, calm, and collected, but it was soon to be a rather emotional time for Neale. He really wished that he had that number four....

But Neale sent. All's well that ends well, right?
Alik rope soloed it. In case you were wondering what a bad motherfucker looks like from above, this is it.

He stemmed a lot more than me or Neale did, I think, which is likely to be the good beta.

Neale had wanted to start the crux pitch without his puffy jacket. I could hear the wind whipping up above, and suggested that I didn't think that was a good idea. When I got to the belay, Neale was shivering and miserable, even in his puffy. The problem is that whole massive block that makes up the top of the above photo is actually a detached pillar, and there is a chimney leading out to the side that isn't visible. It was a really really cool feature, but it also served to collect the wind and funnel it onto poor, tired, shivering and stressed-out Neale.

This pitch, a 5.9, was astoundingly kickass.

Neale is up to the roof, where the route traverses left out of the roof a bit and then pulls over a lip into the belay. Essentially, it was a really good, really aesthetic pitch, that ended in a 5.9 roof. Cool huh????

Neale, still much too cold to be happy, at the belay. From here it was only about 40 feet of scrambling to the "summit".

We took turns scrambling to the top. There are no heroic summit photos, which is a damned shame.

We shared the raps with Alik (which actually totally blows his solo ascent - so much for him being a badass.)

Alik raps.

Alik making faces. I'm not sure why this photo is blurry - I think camera shake. It was pretty cold and windy.

Walking down.

This photo looks peaceful, but the day was anything but. The wind was WHIPPING all day. It threw rocks and blew waterfalls back up the mountain - standing upwind of a creek could cause you get soaked if a gust came up and blew the creek onto you. I had to kneel, if I remember right, to get this photo. I was gripped walking through areas of crevasses for fear of being blown into one (I sat suddenly onto my ass a few times to avoid being blown in). Our faces were blasted with gravel, and we had to shout in order to speak - though I mostly avoided speaking to Neale, since the wind made him especially grouchy. At one point during the walk out, there is a steep uphill off the moraine onto the hillside above, and for part of it I literally was able to spread my arms and be blown up the hill, just shuffling my feet. The flipside of that was when the trail switchbacked, and we had to go back upwind......

Once in the forest, a certain quantity of tranquility returned.

The standard photo of the return to town, crossing the outlet of Lago Torre. The wind, still was whipping.

This was likely the best send of the trip, though maybe not a better day out than Poincenot. One more post, from an ascent of Guillamet, will follow in time....