A game of two halves (Greater ranges climbing)

Monday 09 November 2009 04:36PM

When you go on expedition to climb new routes in a little-visited area, you do so with an acceptance of a higher than usual risk of getting nothing done. Unpredictable and severe weather, difficult logistics, uncertain climbing difficulties and innumerable other factors combine to make your chances of success much lower than in better known ranges, or when repeating existing routes. This is perhaps more true of Patagonia, with its infamous weather, than most other places. However, one thing I didn’t expect from my recent trip there with Mick Fowler was that we would fail to find something new that we wanted to climb. The wall we were going to was so wide that there would surely be something good-looking on it…

Within ten minutes of seeing the face close up we had decided that our intended route was too dangerous, threatened as it was by active seracs for most of its 2200m of elevation gain, but the subsequent walk south underneath the immense east face showed pretty much the same story for the rest of the face. Lines that weren’t threatened by seracs terminated in the most monstrous cornice I’ve ever seen – we estimated it to be more than 100m of overhanging ice and snow and we had no idea whether we’d be able to climb it if we got that far.

So we committed the cardinal Patagonian sin – squandering good weather, all 5 days of it, searching left and right for a line we wanted to do. Returning to basecamp exhausted from endless trail-breaking in knee deep snow, we set our sights on a repeat of the superb-looking east ridge, first climbed by a South African team in 1986 and repeated a handful of times since. Unfortunately, in our short expedition, we didn’t get another weather window before it was time to leave. Sum total of climbing for me and Mick: 200m of grade 1 gully. Perhaps it was grade 2 at a push, I even swung my axe a few times! Frustrating.

So at the end of all that sitting around I was glad to have Hil coming out to visit me for a few more weeks of adventure. Our sights were set firmly on a circuit round Fitzroy and Cerro Torre, starting by climbing up the Rio Electrico valley to Paso Marconi, then following the Patagonian icecap southwards, and returning to El Chalten via Paso del viento.

During the expedition we had come to trust the weather forecasts provided here (http://www.arl.noaa.gov/ready.php), so we delayed our planned departure on the trek to time with a coming weather window. This worked perfectly, we walked to Paso Marconi in bad weather, but that seemed to add excitement rather than too much gnarl to the situation, as we were sheltered from the strong westerly by the mountains. We dug our second tent platform in a wind scoop at the foot of Cordon Marconi, on the very edge of the vast icecap, slightly concerned by the thick black clouds above us, but woke to clear blue skies the following day.

Throughout the trek I was impressed by the level of adventure involved, I had expected a relatively easy trek, but it often felt more like mountaineering than trekking. Hil is relatively new to all this but takes to it so naturally that I’m continually amazed. She never seems to get cold and finds the prospect of bad weather, big drops, seracs and scrambling with a big rucksack on exciting rather than intimidating. Even the less glamorous sides of mountaineering, like peeing in a bottle and not showering for days on end she took to with characteristic humour. I was already a very proud and happy man when we arrived at Circo des los Altares, beneath the west side of Cerro Torre, in perfect weather. By the time we left the next morning, I was engaged to be married!

The rest of the trek was too dramatic to do justice to it here. The low point being Hil going into respiratory arrest (stopping breathing) through a slight overdose of the Tramadol she was taking to control post-bunion-op feet. Thankfully that resolved itself within a few minutes, and after an anxious and drowsy afternoon we continued. We arrived back in El Chalten to discover that Hil had also just become an aunty (and me an uncle-to-be). The first meal usually back in civilisation usually tastes amazing, but with two big events and Hil’s survival to celebrate it tasted better than ever!

We then spent a few weeks doing more conventional touristy things, heading southwards to Tierra Del Fuego. I got a few “dawn patrol” outings on the skis in the mountains above Ushuaia, which has got me properly psyched for the upcoming ski-alpinism race season.

The return to the UK has been a bit of a culture shock, trying to get straight back into work and writing a Masters thesis. Things were lightened a little bit on Sunday when I won a local race that I hadn’t done before – the “Leg it round Lathkill”. Only the second win of the season, I clearly need to pick my races more carefully!

Photos from both halves of the trip here

Mick’s take on events here