A four day trek around Fitz Roy
"It's called the Guillaumet pass. It's generally used by climbers. There's a little crevasse danger but as long as the weather holds it'd be fine. You'd be right underneath Monte Fitz Roy."
The e-mail I'd opened was from a 29-year old Argentinean mountain guide, Pedro Fina. I'd first met Pedro in 2004, when he was one of two guides I'd had on a 4-week trekking expedition in South America. During that trip, we'd climbed a glacier beside two of the great peaks of the Patagonian Andes, Monte Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre, and traversed a small portion of the Southern Patagonian Ice Cap, a flat expanse of thick ice - 13,000km2 - that flows west from the mountains and down into the Pacific Ocean.
My objective this year was to get much closer to the mountains, to scratch an exploratory itch I have for Patagonia and to research new treks for a guidebook I was writing to Argentina's Los Glaciares National Park. With the help of Pedro and Rolando Garibotti, a US-based Italian-Argentine mountain guide and an expert on Patagonia climbing, I'd settled on a shorter expedition around Monte Fitz Roy, connecting small cirques and climbers' trails with pocket glaciers and high bealachs to create a trek that I hoped would offer me the finest views possible of the Fitz Roy massif.
"I'll pick you up at 7am. There's a 3-4 day good weather forecast and we should take advantage of it whilst we can."
I'd only been in Argentina a day when Pedro suggested we
should leave the following morning. Neither of us had any
desire to be caught out in a Patagonian storm. The weather
in Patagonia is commonly said to be amongst the worst in
the world. Gregory Crouch, in his book, 'Enduring
Patagonia', describes how dark storm fronts that begin
life deep in the Pacific Ocean rampage across the sea
uninterrupted, the cold and wet air picking up moisture
and gaining in speed as it heads towards a thick belt of
low pressure, termed a circumpolar trough, ringing
Antarctica. When this trough has expanded over Patagonia,
as is all too often the case, the storms are dragged
kicking and screaming over the Andes first. It is not
uncommon to encounter wind speeds of 160 kph. When this is
the case, the last place you'd want to be is up in the
mountains where, as Greg quotes US climber Jim Donini in
his book, "survival is not assured".
It was this sobering thought that occupied my mind when,
two days later, Pedro and I stood atop the 1700 m high
Paso Cuadrado and prepared to descend 400 m of blue,
translucent ice to reach the remote and heavily-crevassed
glacier we could see far below us.
We had climbed the 200 m to Paso Cuadrado that morning, after ascending 1000 m the day before from a private campsite just outside Los Glaciares National Park and spending a dry, cold night beside a huge, black rock called Piedra Negra. Two off Pedro's friends spent the night with us, shivering without sleeping bags as they waited to attempt a nearby peak, Aguja Guillaumet.
By 11.00am Pedro's friends could be a world away. Having carefully descended the ice slope we'd swapped crampons for snow shoes and headed uphill towards the Fitz Roy Norte Glacier. A huge jumble of ice towers, or seracs, spilled out of a higher basin as the glacier broke up and made its way down valley. Giving this icefall a wide berth we traversed instead beneath a jagged bergschrund that had formed as the ice had torn itself away from the huge granite walls of Aguja Mermoz. Rock-fall was a distinct possibility and more than a few deep breaths were taken before we passed the seracs and could cut back onto the upper part of the glacier. As we did so, everything underfoot turned to pristine white.
Perhaps it was the uncommon lack of wind and the
resultant silence or more likely my jangly nerves, but the
further I walked into this glacial cirque the more the
surroundings began to affect me. It wasn't just that we
were far from civilisation - a 2 day walk to the small
town of El Chalten unless you could climb expertly - but
that if you had seen us we would have been impossibly
small. Behind us was the 400m ice slope we had just
descended. We had to climb it again later in the day. To
our right was a vast wall of ice-clad cliffs, 200 m high,
which made up the southern side of Cerro Pollone and Cerro
Piergiorgio. Beyond these cliffs was the Southern
Patagonian Ice Cap, beyond that only the Pacific Ocean. In
front of us was the fourth 'wall' of the cirque, the Filo
del Hombre Sentado, or Sitting Man Ridge. At the top of
this ridge the ground dropped 700 m to the Torre Glacier
before it rose up the other side again to form a 3 km long
incisored skyline of agujas, or needles, that culminates
in three of the most recognisable and difficult to climb
mountains in the world - Cerro Torre, Torre Egger and
Cerro Standhardt.
Clearly visible from the ridge is the most popular route
up Cerro Torre; the so-called Compressor Route, named
after the Italian climber, Cesare Maestri, who drilled
over 400 bolts into the mountain as he climbed it in 1970.
Despite the prevailing weather, and the outcry of many a
traditional climber, the bolts are still there, as is the
drill itself. It is tolerated by many of today's climbers
as an opportune place to stand on an otherwise blank
vertical wall. Maestri's original claim to have summited
the mountain in better style, in 1959, up the far harder
north-east ridge, is still a subject of much debate. This
route was not climbed without suspicion until 2005, by the
afore-mentioned Rolando Garibotti and two Italian friends,
Ermanno Salvaterra and Alessandro Beltrami. Rolando is one
of many people who believe, not without reason, that the
first people to climb Cerro Torre were a team of Italians,
in 1974, via the west face.
All views paled into insignificance however by the
massive, 1600 m high flange of granite that rose up on our
left. Monte Fitz Roy's huge west face is split in two - as
if by a mighty axe blow - by the majestic Supercanaleta,
or Super Coulouir.
If you're the American climber, Dean Potter, this 60
degree, ice-filled couloir is regarded as an easy way up
the mountain. In 2004, Potter raced from the bottom of the
couloir to the summit of Fitz Roy, all 1600m of snow, ice
and rock, in a mere 6 hours 29 minutes. He then descended
the other side of the mountain the same day. In 1965, the
first ascensionists of the couloir, Argentineans Jose-Luis
Fonrouge and Carlos Comesana, took a more realistic 2
days, before they descended on their third day through a
storm that raged around the mountains for a staggering 36
days. You can be sure this thought wasn't far from my mind
as I considered the meagre two days rations I had packed
in my backpack.
“The next bit's got the crevasses”, Pedro said, as he handed me my obligatory fix of morning coffee. “Great”, I said, but I didn't really mean it. Although it was possible for us to have abseiled the Sitting Man Ridge and descended the Torre Glacier back to El Chalten this was way outside the realms of my experience and we had chosen instead to return to Piedra Negra. It was from here that we were headed for Paso Guillaumet, a small notch in the mountains that enabled access across the east-west divide, and from there to another high mountain pass, Paso Superior, that lay right in front of Monte Fitz Roy. Both Pedro and Rolando had told me in their e-mails that the view between these passes was spectacular.
The ground up to Paso Guillaumet was similiar to the
previous day; long, steep ice slopes broken up by the odd
rock outcrop that we took advantage of for snack breaks.
Higher up, we entered a gully system until a large,
angular rock blocked the way and we were forced to move
out onto a buttress for a few easy pitches of easy
rock-climbing.
On reaching the pass the view opened out to the east and
we could see far below us, out over the glaciers to the
dry, brown Patagonian steppes and the stone-gray waters of
the enormous Lago Viedma. My eyes kept darting back and
forward between the contrast of the brown steppes in the
distance with the whiteness of the ice cap we could see
over to the west.
Once we crossed the watershed we headed up towards a rock
apron that made up the lower eastern face of Aguja
Guillaumet. Traversing the base of this mountain we passed
the Amy Coulouir, a narrow ice hose that offers a popular
way to the summit. It was this route that Pedro's friends
had taken the day before. The jagged rent of a bergschrund
and other crevasse danger eventually caused us to head
away from the mountains and descend towards a large,
snow-covered plateau that is only hinted at from the usual
treks near El Chalten. As we neared the plateau, Pedro
wasn't happy with the route we had taken and he walked
back towards me, motioning for us to find another way to
descend. As we did so, I looked back up to our right and
could see our footprints on top of a huge, overhanging ice
cliff. The gap that had opened up beneath it was big
enough to swallow a house.
Once on the relative safety of the plateau, I could
finally appreciate the view. The magnificent east face of
Monte Fitz Roy was only half a kilometre away. It's
impossibly huge and I still can't imagine anyone having
the courage to climb it. Even to reach the bealachs either
side of the peak involves 300 m of technical climbing –
and the summit is still another 1,000 m higher. It was
first reached in 1952, by the Frenchman, Lionel Terray,
and his partner, Guido Magnone. It took their expedition
many weeks to reach the top and a lot of time was spent
burrowed underground in snow caves waiting out bad
weather.
At the far end of the plateau, making up the southern end of the Fitz Roy skyline, was the huge granite tooth of Aguja Poincenot. The English mountaineer, Don Whillans, was the first person to climb this peak, joining a team of Irish climbers in 1957 who attempted the mountain on a Guinness sponsorship. Their descent of the mountain was hampered by strong winds and it was 20 hours before they reached the safety of their high camp at Paso Superior. When they did so they were exhausted - Pedro said this reminded him of when he and his friends had climbed the mountain in 2003; they were so tired they kept sitting down and falling asleep during their descent.
Our own traverse to Paso Superior was uneventful, if
nerve-wracking. Dropping off the plateau onto a steep snow
slope, we traversed above an intermittent line of
blue-black crevasses that threatened to catch any fall. It
was easy terrain but after two days of steep ice slopes,
seracs and crevasses my nerves were frazzled and I just
wanted to be on solid ground. I got my wish when, just
below the pass, we encountered a 10 m rock wall with a
flotsam of old fixed rope and a rope ladder that hung
loosely down the rock. With no desire to put any weight on
the trashed ropes I cIimbed a mixture of rock and ladder
and pulled myself up over the top and out onto Paso
Superior. It was empty, except for a large climbers'
haulbag sitting on the snow.
The plan had been to stay at Paso Superior for one night,
using one of the existing snow caves or digging a new one,
before descending 1,000 m down the glacier the following
morning to reach Laguna de los Tres. This small lake at
the foot of the glacier is the usual high point for
trekkers in the national park. It has great views of the
Fitz Roy mountains, especially in the early morning. I
should have been looking forward to it. But on the plateau
I'd decided I'd had enough. Enough steep snow and ice
slopes. Enough thoughts of falling into a crevasse and
dying a cold and unpleasant death. Turning the sight of
some grey, wispy clouds I'd seen forming over Fitz Roy
into the leading edge of a storm, I asked Pedro how long
it would take us to get down to Laguna de los Tres. "2,
maybe 3 hours?" he replied, "then another 30 minutes to
Campamento Poincenot. Oh, plus another hour to get back to
the car." "What's the ground like?", I asked, immediately
deciding it was worth it, regardless of the terrain. "Do
you want to leave now?" he replied, giving me that
quizzical look talented folk give you when they just don't
understand. "Yeah, I've got a book to write", I said,
adding "And the weather's got to turn sometime". "Okay" he
replied, "let's get moving. If we hurry we'll make it all
the way to El Chalten." And with that, we packed up and
headed for home.
Replicate this Fitz Roy trek
I've written a Patagonia travel and trekking guidebook, which includes all the details for this Fitz Roy trek.