Once again I find myself walking toward the Torre valley, but this time the landscape is unusual, at least for this time of year. The trees are white and the puddles frozen. The sky is at that moment of the day when it starts to shift from pale bluish pastels to intense oranges. My heart, still a little sore from the loss, is excited. As my body warms up, Cerro Solo appears in the distance. I remember last year, when Lichi and I were running toward it in the night. I remember him, a faint smile comes over me and my eyes fill with tears. As we pick up pace I let my emotions speak to me, and I listen. Uncertainty takes over, the fears show up little by little; death, which I so often avoid, takes centre stage. It can't be any other way, not today.
We are heading out on a big mission, a climb at the limit of my abilities, and I hope I'm up to it. With Pedro and Tom it's always easy to go climbing: their motivation, their technical level, their knowledge, their patience and humility. They never make you feel the pressure of the situation.
I come out of my thoughts as the sun starts to warm my back. I grab the camera and take some photos and videos. The talking starts, the laughing. Little by little, as we move away from El Chaltén, the fears get left behind. Some beside a tree, others in the stream, one flies away and lightens the pack. I think of Mom. I'd like to give her a big hug and let her know everything will be fine. I send it to her from afar and sink into the present, while my feet carry me toward the mountains and my mind lets go of the future. I look at Cerro Solo once more and smile.
The weather in Chaltén has been bad for a month. The guys and I have a mission to go and film an adventure, but we haven't had the chance yet. On February 7th I wake up and follow the ritual: I fill the kettle, light the burner, leave it heating, open the laptop and load the weather update. I go through the different models and they all say the same thing: a small window of good weather, about 16 hours, starting at midnight on the 8th and lasting until 4 pm on the 9th. This could be our chance. I message the guys. Soon we're all at my place, starting to plan the adventure. The window was coming in cold, so we decided to go for a route called Tomahawk, which links up with another called Exocet. 800 metres of ice climbing in total. Ice is the terrain where I feel least comfortable, which without a doubt makes this a much bigger challenge for me, but I know the guys handle it well and I trust their choice.
A few days earlier, while we were helping build the roof of Tom's house, Edgar was with us, a friend of the guys who has lived in town for several years. Between conversations he told us he'd love to join us on an adventure as far as the camp. So while we were packing for the climb we sent him a message, and 15 minutes later he was at the house, ready to leave with us the next day.
Ice axes, crampons, ropes, screws, tent, food… We get organised, split up the tasks… my part: cameras, batteries, tripod, filters… It starts taking shape and I get excited. After a month of bad weather, we're going to the mountains! I go over my responsibilities; I have nothing to do for more than a week. I send a few messages, pay a few bills. I pack my bag: sleeping bag, dreams, harness, expectations, stove, fears, crampons, food, memories and, as always, the camera.
The first day was calm. We took about 10 hours to reach the Noruegos camp, largely because a big snowfall the day before had added difficulty to the already awkward terrain it takes to get there. Even so, by 4 pm we are pitching the tents. We have to shovel some snow, and the stream that usually has water is frozen. We melt snow and start drinking and eating something. The plan is to leave at midnight, so we set the alarm for 11 and go to sleep early.
What thoughts go through your head at moments like these? There are certainly objective dangers in what we're about to do, and there isn't much point in thinking about them. Instead, I think about the risks we can manage and go over the gear we're taking. We're leaving at a good time to climb in cold temperatures. We won't have much good weather, so we'll have to move fast before the storm comes in. I close my eyes. I picture that moment, walking calmly on the glacier at night. The mountains are mostly long stretches of calm and stillness, with a few peaks of action and adrenaline. I focus on the first. Little by little my body relaxes and I manage to sleep a few hours.
The alarm goes off.
Despite having slept less than 4 hours I wake up full of energy. I quickly get out of the tent and meet the guys. Edgar gets up too and heats water while we pack. We drink and eat well before leaving. Without rushing we start walking toward the glacier. We're going light; if all goes well we'll be back at camp in less than 20 hours. No stove, no sleeping bags. 2 packs between the 3 of us. We reach the glacier, rope up and keep going. The night starts to turn beautiful. Few clouds in the sky, almost no wind. As we navigate the ice, each of us walks in silence, preparing our minds for a long day. Less than 2 hours later we're starting to climb. Pedro goes first, a pitch of mixed terrain. He makes it look easy and moves fast. He shouts: "Off belay!" I get ready to climb. Crampons and axes, most of the pitch is on rock. I move slowly at first, warming up. A fun traverse and at the end a rock section, good hand jams, standing on edges with my crampons. I reach the anchor and Tom arrives soon after. We're excited. Pedro stays in the lead for the next 3 pitches. An easy mixed one. Then one of ice, really good! The last one is a bit strange: the ice isn't great, and he has to avoid it and do a section of aid. We're making good time. Tom takes the lead as the sun starts lighting up the walls and brings out the gold of the granite. Unluckily (or maybe luckily, as we would later come to think) that pitch stops us. What had been ice turned into snow, and after more than an hour of trying and trying, Tom decides to come down. He shows us a photo of the corner and we head down. There was no way through. We rappel what we had climbed quite quickly and before 11 am we're back on the glacier. A spectacular day. No wind, full sun. We walk back slowly and stop on a big flat spot to look at the east faces of the towers. We eat salami and cheese as we start talking about the different routes there. At one point the guys start talking about a beautiful red corner where there are no routes. A nice project for next year! Or so they say…
We get back to Noruegos, Edgar is waiting for us, we eat something and lie down to rest. At 2 pm the storm we were expecting comes in… Lucky we're already down.
The next day and a half is hard to put into words. A lot of time in the tent, many thoughts, many feelings. Stories I keep to myself, laughs and conversations. What I can describe is the feeling of calm, of stillness. Of not just passing through a place, but inhabiting it. Even if only briefly, a place that had always been a stopover for me was starting to become home. With time frozen inside the tent, just the four of us, the Fitz, the Torre. Everything so still, between naps, looking out the door and seeing the same thing, just one more cloud, one less.
What matters for this story happened on the night of day 3. News reaches us that days 6 and 7 (February 13th and 14th) will be good… We start debating: do we go down? Do we stay? Where do we go?
We don't have food for that many days, and it has to be something on an east face because there will be some wind on the 13th. We finally land on a plan. Pedro wants to go down. We have no problem staying. Perfect. He goes down light, spends a night in Chaltén and brings up the food and gear we're missing. The plan? The east face of the Standhardt… The project the guys had spotted!
The next morning dawns windless and sunny. Pedro leaves before sunrise. Tom and I decide to go to the Torrisimo, a very aesthetic tower between Aguja Medialuna and the Torre.
Edgar joins us on the approach. We walk along the glacier to a flat spot with unmatched views. Edgar stays there, ready for the show. Tom and I head toward the Torrisimo. We're not really sure where you're supposed to go up. So we aim for the line that looks most obvious. We climb an easy snow gully to the wall. Tom switches his boots for climbing shoes and goes for it. He takes a while on the pitch, knocks off some rocks and a bit of ice. He does a couple of pendulums. He builds an anchor. My turn! Clearly the route didn't go this way.
The second pitch is mine. It starts with a fist crack that widens. I move up about ten metres without much protection and manage to place some small pieces in a crack off to the side. I keep going. I fight the offwidth for a while until I finally get past it… One more little move to mantle onto a ledge. Whoosh, my foot slips, I'm flying! The gear holds, the fall is clean. I go back up. I get through the move fine. An easy traverse right and I continue up another crack. At one point it closes. I do a tiny pendulum and switch to another crack that looks better. I place a good piece and commit to a section with small holds and a poor crack. I make a couple of moves that make me squeeze, bring my feet up, crimp an edge and manage to stand up and grab a good undercling. There isn't much to protect. I place two very small pieces, but I doubt they'd hold a fall. I visualise the next moves. A few bouldery moves where I have to give it everything put me back in a good crack. Shouts of encouragement come up from the glacier below. It's Edgar, in his VIP seat, watching us climb. I place a good piece and breathe, with the last good protection 6 metres below. I finish the rest of the pitch and bring Tom up. We put our boots back on and continue to the summit tower over easy terrain.
The last pitch is quite overhanging and very exposed. Tom solves it on aid and then I follow, also having to aid much of the pitch. While rappelling a rope gets stuck, and then we have to set up a couple of new rappels because we'd gone up any old way. We go and find Edgar, who in the meantime had built himself a house out of snow, and we head down to camp. When we reach Noruegos we find lots of friends who had started coming up to the mountains. The window is coming!
The next day dawns windy and many of the other teams' plans are thwarted. Luckily it's our rest day, so we stay in the tents, watching the walls and the little dots going up and down. Drinking mate with visitors, napping in the shelter of our tents. The day goes by, the sun acts as the clock's hands and the granite spires as its numbers. We are immersed in one of the most incredible valleys in the world, witness to so many adventures, to tragedies, to thousands of meaningful moments in the lives of many. A place with an indescribable energy, magnetic, inspiring, energy enough to set the course of a life, until its death.
Pedro arrives, with joy and provisions, drawn to adventure by a supernatural (or perhaps super-natural) pull.
Once again the alarm goes off at night and our movements are slow. Once again the silent night march begins. The senses wake up, with time, unhurried, as the terrain demands. I find myself free, tied to friends, moving up a river of ice in search of a viewpoint, a place to look from higher up, from a different angle, at the nature we are part of. We decide that this search should be an aesthetic one. The importance of aesthetics! The world is an astonishing place. A flower is beautiful so that some insect will come close, but it is also beautiful for everyone else. It is beautiful for the mouse, beautiful for the human, beautiful for the rock. It is beautiful and it shares its beauty. The mountains, which transcended the concept of life and death, are beautiful for no reason. They trace elegant lines, impossible shapes, harmonious contrasts and colours. I ask myself: if nature, beyond life, is beautiful, how could we not follow that beauty? How could we not want to climb that place that captures our hearts, how could we not want to follow the most elegant line that emerges from the chaos of existence?
Near dawn we're ready to start climbing on rock. A beautiful 500-metre wall rises above us. Pedro starts in the lead, a few easy pitches that we all climb, enjoying the perfect granite. Hauling the haul bag becomes the biggest challenge. After a snowfield Tom takes over for the next pitches. 2 hard pitches: one that goes free, slightly overhanging, with several cracks. The other… demands a lot of time and aid. An easier pitch, but traversing on very rotten terrain. The haul bag gets in the way again. Pedro carries it on his back and does the traverse as best he can.
We reach the base of my block of pitches. I look up and see the wall falling on top of me. 180 metres of overhang, of perfect granite. Pedro offers to take them and I accept. Thank goodness! The pitches that follow are very physical and hard. The first goes through a series of impossible caves. They could be the nests of some giant bird guarding the mountains. Pedro builds the anchor on one of these pitches and Tom and I jumar up. Here we stop for a while to take in where we are, have a snack and rest. The next 2 pitches are the best pitches I have ever seen. A perfect crack splits a golden, slightly overhanging corner. An easier pitch at the end and we come out onto a snowfield. We connect with the last pitch of an existing route.
This short account was about 16 hours. With the two little devils climbing at full speed up perfect corners and heavenly cracks. Me following, with more motivation than technique, with that natural urge to ascend. Filming everything I can, trying to capture fragments of an adventure and of a brotherhood.
We continue a few more hours over snowy terrain, now in the dark. Focused. We only have 4 ice axes, so the two of us behind have just one each, roped together but without protection. We reach a ledge 6 pitches below the summit, where we can eat and sleep for a while. When the alarm goes off only 2 hours have passed. Without saying much, we get ready. We're at that risky moment where everyone wants to go up but nobody wants to continue. We say nothing. Still in the dark and very tired, we take on the last ice pitches via Exocet. Around 11 in the morning I'm leading the last pitch, on the Standhardt's mushroom. I reach the top and look around. I belay the guys up and we hug.
My body fills with… something… my eyes can't make sense of so much beauty, so perfect, so chaotic, so wild. In that moment I'm occupying a memory forever. I'm living a moment I know I will remember many times and forever. I'm living the only summit that ever exists, the one of the present. The awareness I have in that moment surprises me, and while I watch the guys laughing together, I stop to take a mental, bodily photograph. In an impossible place, usually hostile, nature gives us a moment to look, to feel and to share. I don't tell them, but I think about how much I love them and how happy I am to see them in their element.
We start down, a long descent with tense moments. Tired, dehydrated. We go down helped by gravity, but for some reason it's harder than going up. When we reach Noruegos 8 hours later, Edgar welcomes us. What a luxury! He gives us water and cooks. We eat, tell stories, sleep, wake up, laugh, take down our home and pack everything into our little shell. The walk, unhurried, brings us back to El Chaltén.
If we try to understand the miracle of life, we will be disappointed, because some things are beyond our understanding or imagination. If instead we follow the path of beauty, there will only be room for surprise and awareness.
If we try to understand the consequences of a butterfly's wingbeat, we will be swallowed by chaos. If instead we enjoy the beauty of the butterfly, we will discover the horizons of its wingbeat.
