In a flurry of activity taking place on Cerro Torre in early December, Norwegians Ole Lied and Trym Atle Saeland completed perhaps the oldest project on the mountain, the much talked about but rarely attempted Spiral Route, which begins up the Standard Compressor Route on the South East Ridge and finishes up the final section of the West Face.
Back in the late 1950s, an ascent of the spectacular rock and ice tooth of Cerro Torre was considered one of the World's greatest mountaineering challenges.
Before his infamous claim to have ascended the North Ridge, the Italian Cesare Maestri made an aerial reconnaissance of Cerro Torre and realized that the South East Ridge offered the most feasible line of attack but that in its upper section, above the ice towers, the headwall looked formidable.
Maestri proposed climbing the ridge as far as the ice towers, at which point it looked quite feasible to traverse left across a large snowfield on the South Face, above its lower overhanging section and below the vertical ice-encrusted headwall. From the end of the snowfield a route could be forced onto the top section of the West Ridge and then up the West Face to the summit.
However, in 1959 Maestri chose to focus his attention on the North Ridge and it wasn't until 1967 that an exceptionally strong and primarily-British team arrived in Patagonia with Maestri's original proposition as its goal.
Martin Boysen, Mick Burke, Pete Crew and Dougal Haston, with the noted Argentinean pioneer José Luis Fonrouge, planned to climb the virgin South East Ridge of the mountain more or less on the crest. Using fixed ropes and with Haston leading the hard aid pitches, the team climbed to approximately one pitch below the snowfield, where a smooth slab on the crest stopped them.
In order to surmount this obstacle, they realized they would have to do a bit of drilling and as Haston had previously dropped the bolt kit, the team was forced to return to base camp to collect another drill. Unfortunately, the subsequent weather pattern ensured they were never able to make another attempt.
In 1999 the climber most associated with pioneering in Patagonia, Italian Ermanno Salvaterra, returned to the idea of climbing the South East Ridge direct. With Mauro Mabboni, he spent nearly seven days on the mountain progressing in alpine-style with a portaledge.
From the start of the infamous 60m rightwards bolt traverse on the Compressor Route, the two Italians continued straight up the crest for five pitches at A2 and some very fine 6a+ to rejoin the Compressor Route below the Ice Towers, at the point where it would be relatively easy to access the snow field to the left. Bad weather forced them down at this point. Other parties, including British climbers Leigh McGinley and Mick Pointon, have also travelled to Patagonia with this aim.
Lied and Sealand completed the envisaged line on the 2nd December but a snow mushroom on the crest of the South East Ridge forced them to use some of the old bolts on the Compressor Route before reaching the snowfield.
A day prior to their ascent Jorge Ackermann, Tomas Aguilo, Charly Cabezas, Rolando Garibotti and Matias Villavicencio from Argentina, and the female German alpinist, Doerte Pietron, became only the seventh party to reach the highest point of Cerro Torre (atop the summit mushroom) via the West Face. The Norwegians were the eighth and would have greatly benefited from the Argentineans’ laboriously excavated 'tunnel' on the headwall.
The pair have a good record of alpine ascents: Sealand climbed the Compressor Route around nine years ago, while Lied has put up first ascents in Baffin Island. Both have climbed Hunter's Moonflower Buttress in Alaska.
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