Cerro Torre
Encyclopedia
Cerro Torre is one of the mountain
s of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field
in South America
. It is located in a region which is disputed between Argentina
and Chile
, west of Cerro Chalten
(also known as Fitz Roy). The peak is the highest in a four mountain chain: the other peaks are Torre Egger
(2,685 m), Punta Herron, and Cerro Stanhardt. The top of the mountain often has a mushroom of rime ice, formed by the constant strong winds, increasing the difficulty of reaching the actual summit.
claimed in 1959 that he and Toni Egger had reached the summit and that Egger had been swept to his death by an avalanche while they were descending. Inconsistencies in Maestri's account, and the lack of bolts, pitons or fixed ropes on the route, has led most mountaineers to doubt Maestri's claim. In 2005, Ermanno Salvaterra, Rolando Garibotti
and Alessandro Beltrami, after many attempts by world-class Alpinists, put up a confirmed route on the face that Maestri claimed to have climbed.
Maestri went back to climb again Cerro Torre in 1970 together with Ezio Alimonta, Daniele Angeli, Claudio Baldessarri, Carlo Claus and Pietro Vidi, trying a new route on the southeast face. With the aid of a gas-powered compressor drill, Maestri equipped 350 m of rock with bolts and got to the end of the rocky part of the mountain, just below the ice mushroom. Maestri claimed that "the mushroom is not part of the mountain" and did not continue to the summit. The compressor was left, tied to the last bolts, 100 m below the top. The route Maestri followed is now famous as the Compressor route and was climbed again all the way to the summit in 1979 by Jim Bridwell
and Steve Brewer. Most parties on the route consider the ascent complete only if they summit the ice-rime mushroom to the top.
The first undisputed ascent was made by the 1974 Italian expedition composed by Daniele Chiappa, Mario Conti, Casimiro Ferrari, and Pino Negri.
ascent was completed by Dave Carman, John Bragg and Jay Wilson of the USA. They took a week to summit Cerro Torre, which had taken the Italian group two months to summit.
In January 2008, Rolando Garibotti
and Colin Haley made the first complete traverse of the entire massif
, climbing Aguja Standhardt, Punta Herron, Torre Egger and Cerro Torre together. They rate their route at Grade VI 5.11 A1 WI6 Mushroom Ice 6
, with 2200 m (7,217.8 ft) total vertical gain. This had been "one of the world's most iconic, unclimbed lines", first attempted by Ermanno Salvaterra.
In 2010, Austrian Climber David Lama was responsible for a further 60 bolts and 700m of fixed rope added to the Compressor Route on the mountain. Whilst the bolts were drilled by Austrian guide, Heli Putz, and not by Lama himself, it was done as part of his trip sponsored by Red Bull and many climbers regard Lama and Red Bull as responsible. Many of the bolts were drilled next to cracks, which are usually used by climbers for protection on the route. This has caused a large amount of controversy amongst certain climbers' circles, as his actions are regarded as unethical according to climbing purists.
, directed by Werner Herzog
and starring Vittorio Mezzogiorno
, Hans Kammerlander, and Donald Sutherland
.
Jon Krakauer
, in Into Thin Air
, mentions the mountain as one of his earlier difficult ascents (1992): "I'd scaled a frightening, mile-high spike of vertical and overhanging granite called Cerro Torre; buffeted by hundred-knot winds, plastered with frangible atmospheric rime, it was once (though no longer) thought to be the world's hardest mountain".
Mountain
Image:Himalaya_annotated.jpg|thumb|right|The Himalayan mountain range with Mount Everestrect 58 14 160 49 Chomo Lonzorect 200 28 335 52 Makalurect 378 24 566 45 Mount Everestrect 188 581 920 656 Tibetan Plateaurect 250 406 340 427 Rong River...
s of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field
Southern Patagonian Ice Field
The Southern Patagonian Ice Field , located at the Southern Patagonic Andes between Argentina and Chile, is the second largest contiguous extrapolar extent of ice in the world...
in South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
. It is located in a region which is disputed between Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
and Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
, west of Cerro Chalten
Cerro Chaltén
Monte Fitz Roy is a mountain located near El Chaltén village, in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field in Patagonia, on the border between Argentina and Chile...
(also known as Fitz Roy). The peak is the highest in a four mountain chain: the other peaks are Torre Egger
Torre Egger
Torre Egger is one of the mountains of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field in South America. It is located in a region which is disputed between Argentina and Chile, west of Cerro Chalten...
(2,685 m), Punta Herron, and Cerro Stanhardt. The top of the mountain often has a mushroom of rime ice, formed by the constant strong winds, increasing the difficulty of reaching the actual summit.
First ascent
Cesare MaestriCesare Maestri
Cesare Maestri is an Italian mountaineer and writer.He was born in Trento in the Italian province of Trentino. He began climbing in the Dolomites, where he repeated many famous routes, often climbing them solo and free, and put up many new routes of the hardest difficulty, for which he was...
claimed in 1959 that he and Toni Egger had reached the summit and that Egger had been swept to his death by an avalanche while they were descending. Inconsistencies in Maestri's account, and the lack of bolts, pitons or fixed ropes on the route, has led most mountaineers to doubt Maestri's claim. In 2005, Ermanno Salvaterra, Rolando Garibotti
Rolando Garibotti
Rolando Garibotti is an Argentinian and American professional climber, writer and mountain guide from Bariloche, Argentina, who now resides in Boulder, Colorado-Biography:Born in Bari, Italy...
and Alessandro Beltrami, after many attempts by world-class Alpinists, put up a confirmed route on the face that Maestri claimed to have climbed.
Maestri went back to climb again Cerro Torre in 1970 together with Ezio Alimonta, Daniele Angeli, Claudio Baldessarri, Carlo Claus and Pietro Vidi, trying a new route on the southeast face. With the aid of a gas-powered compressor drill, Maestri equipped 350 m of rock with bolts and got to the end of the rocky part of the mountain, just below the ice mushroom. Maestri claimed that "the mushroom is not part of the mountain" and did not continue to the summit. The compressor was left, tied to the last bolts, 100 m below the top. The route Maestri followed is now famous as the Compressor route and was climbed again all the way to the summit in 1979 by Jim Bridwell
Jim Bridwell
Jim Bridwell is a noted American rock climber and mountaineer, active since 1965 especially in Yosemite Valley, but also in Patagonia and Alaska. He is noted for pushing the standards of both free-climbing and big-wall climbing, and later alpine climbing...
and Steve Brewer. Most parties on the route consider the ascent complete only if they summit the ice-rime mushroom to the top.
The first undisputed ascent was made by the 1974 Italian expedition composed by Daniele Chiappa, Mario Conti, Casimiro Ferrari, and Pino Negri.
Subsequent ascents
In 1977, the first Alpine styleAlpine style
Alpine style refers to mountaineering in a self-sufficient manner, thereby carrying all of one's food, shelter, equipment etc. as one climbs, as opposed to expedition style mountaineering which involves setting up a fixed line of stocked camps on the mountain which can be accessed at one's leisure...
ascent was completed by Dave Carman, John Bragg and Jay Wilson of the USA. They took a week to summit Cerro Torre, which had taken the Italian group two months to summit.
In January 2008, Rolando Garibotti
Rolando Garibotti
Rolando Garibotti is an Argentinian and American professional climber, writer and mountain guide from Bariloche, Argentina, who now resides in Boulder, Colorado-Biography:Born in Bari, Italy...
and Colin Haley made the first complete traverse of the entire massif
Massif
In geology, a massif is a section of a planet's crust that is demarcated by faults or flexures. In the movement of the crust, a massif tends to retain its internal structure while being displaced as a whole...
, climbing Aguja Standhardt, Punta Herron, Torre Egger and Cerro Torre together. They rate their route at Grade VI 5.11 A1 WI6 Mushroom Ice 6
Grade (climbing)
In rock climbing, mountaineering and other climbing disciplines, climbers give a climbing grade to a route that concisely describes the difficulty and danger of climbing the route...
, with 2200 m (7,217.8 ft) total vertical gain. This had been "one of the world's most iconic, unclimbed lines", first attempted by Ermanno Salvaterra.
In 2010, Austrian Climber David Lama was responsible for a further 60 bolts and 700m of fixed rope added to the Compressor Route on the mountain. Whilst the bolts were drilled by Austrian guide, Heli Putz, and not by Lama himself, it was done as part of his trip sponsored by Red Bull and many climbers regard Lama and Red Bull as responsible. Many of the bolts were drilled next to cracks, which are usually used by climbers for protection on the route. This has caused a large amount of controversy amongst certain climbers' circles, as his actions are regarded as unethical according to climbing purists.
Notable ascents and attempts
- 1959 Cesare Maestri and Toni Egger (IT) - disputed ascent of West Face. Egger died.
- 1970 Maestri et al (IT), Compressor route to 60 meters below summit.
- 1974 Daniele Chiappa, Mario Conti, Casimiro Ferrari and Pino Negri (IT). First Undisputed Ascent.
- 1977 Dave Carman, John Bragg and Jay Wilson of the USA. First Alpine-style ascent.
- 1979 Jim BridwellJim BridwellJim Bridwell is a noted American rock climber and mountaineer, active since 1965 especially in Yosemite Valley, but also in Patagonia and Alaska. He is noted for pushing the standards of both free-climbing and big-wall climbing, and later alpine climbing...
and Steve Brewer complete climb of Compressor Route. - 1985 July 3–8 First Winter Ascent by Paolo Caruso, Maurizio Giarolli and Ermanno Salvaterra (IT),
- 1985 November 26 Compressor route - first solo by Marco Pedrini (Swiss). Filmed by Fulvio Mariani: Cerro Torre Cumbre.
- 2004 Five Years to Paradise (ED:VI 5.10b A2 95deg, 1000m) (right center on East Face): Ermanno Salvaterra, Alessandro Beltrami, and Giacomo Rossetti (all from Italy).
In popular culture
Cerro Torre was featured in the 1991 film Scream of StoneScream of Stone
Scream of Stone is a 1991 film directed by Werner Herzog about a climbing expedition on Cerro Torre. The film was shot on location at Cerro Torre, with several scenes filmed close to the summit....
, directed by Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog Stipetić , known as Werner Herzog, is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and opera director.He is often considered as one of the greatest figures of the New German Cinema, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Werner...
and starring Vittorio Mezzogiorno
Vittorio Mezzogiorno
Vittorio Mezzogiorno was an Italian actor.-Biography:Mezzogiorno was born in Cercola, the youngest of seven children. His older brother Vincenzo, who wanted to become a director, introduced him to the theatre....
, Hans Kammerlander, and Donald Sutherland
Donald Sutherland
Donald McNichol Sutherland, OC is a Canadian actor with a film career spanning nearly 50 years. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as The Dirty Dozen, , MASH , and Kelly's Heroes , as well as in such popular films as Klute, Invasion of the...
.
Jon Krakauer
Jon Krakauer
Jon Krakauer is an American writer and mountaineer, primarily known for his writing about the outdoors and mountain-climbing...
, in Into Thin Air
Into Thin Air
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster is a 1997 bestselling non-fiction book written by Jon Krakauer. It details the author's presence at Mount Everest during the 1996 Mount Everest disaster when eight climbers were killed and several others were stranded by a 'rogue storm'...
, mentions the mountain as one of his earlier difficult ascents (1992): "I'd scaled a frightening, mile-high spike of vertical and overhanging granite called Cerro Torre; buffeted by hundred-knot winds, plastered with frangible atmospheric rime, it was once (though no longer) thought to be the world's hardest mountain".
External links
- http://ktml.freeservers.com/Misc/patagonia/to_rutas.htm Climbing topos of Cerro Torre.
- Map of Cerro Torre
- Cerro Torre on SummitPost.org
- The Guardian (UK) article on Cesare Maestri and the controversy regarding the first ascent
- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102855/IMDB article on "Scream of Stone", directed by Werner HerzogWerner HerzogWerner Herzog Stipetić , known as Werner Herzog, is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and opera director.He is often considered as one of the greatest figures of the New German Cinema, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Werner...
from an idea by Reinhold MessnerReinhold MessnerReinhold Messner is an Italian mountaineer and explorer from Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol "whose astonishing feats on Everest and on peaks throughout the world have earned him the status of the greatest climber in history." He is renowned for making the first solo ascent of Mount Everest without...
] - AAJ 2004 article "A Mountain Unveiled" in pdf format
- PataClimb
- Maestri article, National Geographic
