Patagonia Pt. 1: Success
February 2020
Written by: Christian Black
My goal in recounting this experience and this trip is to normalize telling a holistic experience of what can happen in the mountains. I don’t see much use in recounting heroic tales of success without also the lessons of failures and mistakes. I hope you can learn from mine.
It was January of 2020 and my first trip to Patagonia to climb in the Fitz Massif. My friend Otto, his friend James, and my cousin Chase joined me. To be frank, these mountains wildly intimidated me, and I went into the trip with very low expectations. Getting out alive, well and learning as much as possible were my only real goals. We learned the lay of the land in Chalten, found a good housing option for two months and settled into the daily routine of breakfast, weather forecasting and afternoon bouldering.
A week after we arrived, a 24hr weather window materialized and we trekked into Piedra Negra to lay our eyes on the mountains for the first time. We had committed to upholding conservative decision-making as we made our way up the Guillo couloir, turning around just as we topped out the couloir and intercepted the ridge. We rappelled down and navigated the glaciated terrain back to our campsite before dark. Down safely, we counted that as a success.
Aguja De l’S
Fast forward two weeks and we found ourselves at the top of our first Patagonian summit, having climbed a variation of the Austriaca route on Aguja De’l’s. We trekked into Laguna Sucia, bivvying at the boulder cave with a group of friends from town, climbing the route and descending all the way back to town the following day. We had some of our first experiences rock climbing in post-snow-storm mixed conditions, but we eventually got into a groove and figured out how to blend our styles to match the conditions. Another trip back to town safely, another success.
Fitz Roy
As February approached, word of a massive 6-day weather window sprawled through town. Not keeping our hopes up, we continued to check the forecast and were surprised that it was actually set to materialize. As this was likely our only opportunity for a big route, we settled on climbing the Afannassief, a 5000ft route up the Northwest Ridge of Fitz Roy. We knew the route was well within our technical abilities but kept expectations low knowing that the conditions on route could be poor. On February 4th, with a perfect weather forecast, we hiked over Paso Guillaumet onto the Fitz glacier below the Northwest ridge.
The next morning we hiked the snow ramp to the base of the route and waited for the sun to crest before starting. Chase and I carried 20L and 30L packs with 4 days of food, a single sleeping bag and a light tarp to share. Otto and James trailed behind us as a second rope team. A few verglassed 5.10 pitches down low gave way to easier scrambling above, leaving us at our first bivy just below the central slabs. We enjoyed a leisurely evening and chatted briefly with a Swiss team also bivvyng there.
The following day it was apparent the previous storm had deposited much more precipitation on route than we had hoped. Snow and ice filled the cracks of the central slabs, causing us to wait until noon before climbing. As we danced our way up the cracks a light cloud surrounded us, offering only brief views to remind us of our position. The day remained calm and tranquil, but thousands of feet of climbing later and there was still no bivy in sight. The sun dipped behind the western ice cap and the lingering cloud finally obscured our visibility, our headlamps unable to penetrate more than 30 meters. I did my best trying to climb the most logical terrain but was suspicious we may have gone off route.
Climb rambling rock, kick steps in the snow with my climbing shoes, use my ice axe to pull through an ice bulge, stem around the ice on the dry rock.
I was at least getting used to the shenanigans style of mixed climbing conditions the mountain required.
At 1:30am we reached a ledge big enough to sleep all four of us. The cloud had begun to snow gently on us as we rigged up our single tarp for shelter, all four of us huddled underneath. I used my buff to cover my eyes as a sleep mask in an attempt to block my view and forget where I was for the night.
The following morning we awoke to another sunny and windless day with fresh snow blanketing the upper mountain. Almost certainly off-route, we aid climbed 4 pitches of steep cracks in front of us before intercepting the ridge and regaining the route. The mixed conditions kept us on our toes. One pitch in particular I remember starting off free-climbing a snowy crack in approach shoes and gloves, quickly switching to aid climbing by clipping to my ice axe in a crack as a makeshift fifi hook, then putting in some cams to aid-climb around the corner before chalking up and free-climbing to an anchor. I was beginning to enjoy the bullshit style mixed climbing as both engaging and entertaining at least.
Back on route, we had no idea where we were on the mountain, but after consulting an aerial photo determined we were only 150 meters below the summit. It was 4pm and the day was calm as we climbed the final rambling mixed pitches to the summit, stemming around icy sections and using our single axe to pull through without having to don crampons. The normally dry summit of Fitz Roy was covered in low angle soft rime-ice snow as we hiked to the top. The clouds lifted briefly and gave us a view to the town of El Chalten 10,000ft below and the peaks of the Torre Massif to the west. We took a celebratory crab-pose photo before beginning our descent, possibly the one I am most proud of in my collection.
After a few rappels, we found our bivy spot for the night, a tiny 5ft x 5ft flat ledge to share between the 4 of us. We agreed it was mandatory to group-spoon, no one was allowed to sleep on their back and take up too much space. If one person turned, we all turned. Although the most scenic spot I’ve slept in, the small ledge yielded the worst night of sleep in memory. The sunset views almost made up for the tearing shoulder pain of side-sleeping on ice, but not quite.
The following morning was ice cold. As per usual at this point, my approach shoes were frozen solid and required thawing in my sleeping bag before continuing our descent. Most people opt to rappel Fitz Roy via the Franco Argentina route on the southeast side to La Brecha and Paso Superior. However, none of us had been to that side of the mountain and we were doubtful of onsighting the descent. Instead we chose to rappel the 4500ft west face of Fitz Roy via the Francesca Cara Norte, an effort that would take 12 hours of rappelling and 31 double-rope rappels to reach the ground. We later found out almost no one descends this way. Hmmmm. Wonder why.
Shortly before reaching the ground we watched the late afternoon sun cause a small rockfall high on the snow slope. The rockfall started a small sluff in the snow that turned into an ever-widening wet slab avalanche. The mass of running snow slammed into a series of car and house-sized boulders atop granite slabs, pushing them over a cliff in an immense display of power. Humbled by the power of our surroundings we hurried down the snow slopes and back to our glacier camp as fast as we could to mitigate hazard. (In retrospect, it would have been safer to wait until late into the night or early morning to descend in the most favorable snow and temperature conditions). That same evening, we hiked over Paso Guillamet to Piedra Negra. The Fitz Roy glacier had receded almost a quarter mile since we were on it last. What was once easy walking was now a sloshy glacial moraine that filled my shoes with gravel as we stumbled into camp.
The next morning we continued our hike back to town, taking a pit stop at Piedra del Fraile Refugio on the way. Otto and James had proudly maintained voluntary constipation the previous 5 days despite their horrifying on-route diet: pre-made cream cheese and jam sandwiches, a bag of cookies and ever-rotting pre-cooked ground beef with a nightly swig of olive oil for added calories. We later got them to admit this wasn’t the best culinary decision they’ve ever made. Gut health aside, we had made it down safely from Cerro Chalten, thankful she had graced us with safe passage.
During the asadas and festivities following the good weather we heard everyones stories from the previous week. There were many ascents of Cerro Torre, new routes freed and many parties who bailed or changed plans due to the snowy conditions. As we learned later on, we were one of only two parties to summit Fitz Roy that weather window, the other being the Swiss team we encountered on the Afannassief. According to a friend, other folks in town referred to us as the “crazy Americans'' who managed to summit Fitz Roy in poor, snow-covered conditions sans crampons. I think the reality is we didn’t know any better at the time. If an experienced Chalten climber had tipped us off that the route would likely be in unideal shape for rock climbing, we probably would have bailed and chosen a different option. Since we didn’t know any better, we just kept climbing and figuring it out and somehow it kept on working. Was it disaster style? Or were we just actually fit to climb the route despite conditions? I’m not totally sure of the answer honestly, maybe it’s a bit of both.
