Cerro Torre
The Fitzroy massif features one of the most impressive challenges for rock climbers: The magnificent Cerro Torre.
This impressive granite needle is 3133 m high, and you may think that it’s not so high when compared with either Mt. Everest or the K2. But its south face is quite remarkable because it’s a 2000 m high vertical rock wall made of smooth and cold granite, and is usually hit by bad weather, frigid winds, rain, and snow.
The Cerro Torre was considered to be impossible to climb until 1959, when famous Italian climber Cesare Maestri claimed having reached the summit with his partner Tony Egger in alpine style. According to Maestri, tragedy struck them in the descent, when both were caught in a snow avalanche middle way down.
Egger was lost and declared dead; his body was not found until 1974. Maestri was found half buried in the snow. There was no proof of his claim since the camera, that they had supposedly used to take the pictures from the top of the Torre, was stored in Egger’s backpack. Maestri tried several times to repeat his alleged triumph but was never able to do so. And nobody else could.
Eventually, he managed to reach the rock summit (not the higher ice-covered summit) with the help of a compressor, which was used to drill steel bolts into the rock, but the climbing community disregarded this attempt as disrespectful and untrue to the ideal of climbing.
The Cerro Torre ascent claim by Maestri in 1959 is widely recognized as a hoax. And his brute ascent with a rock drilling compressor of 1970 was called “a desecration of mountaineering”.
Jump in time to 1974, when the Italian climbing team called “Ragni di Lecco” (the Spiders from Lecco), a legendary team whose leaders were a notable climber called Casimiro Ferrari and his friend Mario Conti, attempted the ascent of this mountain from the West side.
In order to do this, they had to go across the “Hielo Sur”, the Southern Patagonian ice cap. They crossed the ice field using touring skies and dragging their climbing gear attached to trailing sledges for 10 days. They finally arrived at the back side of the Cerro Torre, a soul crushing beautiful place called the “Circo de los Altares” (Circus of the Altars).
Starting from this place, and employing the ( in those days) newly developed ice climbing techniques, the team reached the summit of the Cerro Torre on January 13. A documentary filmed by them is a proof of their achievement. This ascent is recognized as one of the most notable climbs in history.
Cassimiro Ferrari was so affected by the experience that in 1995 he finally decided to leave Italy and live in Patagonia, near his beloved mountains. He died from cancer in 2001. “Miro”, as he was called by his friends, was perhaps one of the last mythical climbers of the old wave.
The new generation, the one that developed all the free climbing techniques that nowadays we associate with mountaineering today, had its origins in a group of misfits called the Stonemasters. This group of elite rock climbers lived in the Yosemite Valley and made of El Capitan rock walls their playing ground where they polished their abilities.
The Stonemaster Jim Bridwell was the first mountaineer to reach the summit of Cerro Torre in the new “alpine” style.
I’ve visited Cerro Torre twice in my life, even attempting some amateur ice climbing in the Torre Glacier. IMHO this is the most beautiful place in the world, period.
On my second visit in 2002, my ex-wife found a group of red of tents set in the same area that we were camping (we were hardcore trekkers back then). We walked across the tents and, to my amazed eyes, they featured the “Ragni di Lecco” logo.
That afternoon we had the chance to silently listen while Mario Conti, Miro’s lifetime friend, told us the story of their 1974 climb. The “Ragni di Lecco” were there to climb those mountains again as an homage to their leader who had passed away almost 2 years earlier.
Here’s goes a clip from the “1974” climb, and some images of the “Circo de los Altares”. I hope you’ll be as moved by them as me when I was there.
