Hey Everyone,
Sorry about the mass email thing again-time constraints. Anyway, I just wanted to pass along the message that Erik & I succeded on our first summit in the Fitz Roy range.
We topped out on Aguja Guillamet on Sunday afternoon after climbing the Amy Couloir. It was not the ideal climbing day we were expecting but we went for it regardless. The temperature never got above freezing with light snow falling. The clouds would part occasionally below us but never above, so we were climbing in the clouds the whole day. Our water promtly froze so we shared about half a liter between us. It felt a lot like winter climbing in Colorado since we would put on big puffy jackets and mitts at every belay. The gloves and hood never came off!
The route starts with 3 pitches in a narrowing gully after crossing the bergshrund. The crux is normally 60 degree ice in the gully, but with the warm temps earlier in the month followed by weeks of storm, we found snow on rock. This made the crux for us a thin piton crack that we had to slot picks in for a few moves to get past a bulge. After about 700 ft in the gully the route follows a rock ridge to the summit with several steps split by fine granite cracks along the way, maybe 5 pitches or so. The hardest of these is the penultimate pitch which is a striking 5.9 dihedral. The conditions we encountered required us to climb the ridge in boots and crampons. This was fine for most of the route except the nice flared hand & fist cracks. I could get good, gloved handjams but I was at a loss about how to jam my crampons. This made for some awkward pulling through on gear in a few places. When we got to the 5.9 corner I knew it was too steep and smooth for me to climb in points so I switched to Erik´s rock shoes which we brought in the pack just in case. Luckily his big shoes allowed me to wear my thick socks. It was still a bit ridiculous rock climbing in liner gloves with boots, ice tools, down jacket, mitts, gloves, and rock protection dangling off my harness. Needless to say it made a nice pitch seem much harder, especially since the crack and footholds were filled with snow. Erik followed the pitch in boots, crampons, big gloves, AND the Das Parka! He led one more pitch before we unroped for the 500ft snow/rock scramble to the summit. The actual summit is tiny, room for one to stand on with a huge drop off the West Face. We chose not to stand on the tippy top and were satisfied with leaning against it.
The descent required a bunch of rappels with a rope getting stuck on one of them. Erik valiantly re-led and downclimbed to retrieve it. We got down just in time before the weather moved back in for real. We had to scramble down the approach gully in goggles due to the wind blowing spindrift violently in our faces. The “fun” continued on the glacier below with a gust strong enough to knock us over! We finally made it back to our bivy site to endure a night of raging wind and pelting rain zipped in our bivy sacks. We both awoke to everything sopping wet and a 5 hour hike out.
How stoked we were to get back to our little casita to dry out gear and repair the numerous holes in our clothes from crampons and ice tools. Unfortunately, there is no rest for the weary. It looks like the weather is getting good again so hopefully we´ll head back to the Torre Valley tomorrow for a 1-day window on Thursday.
Sorry there´s no photos yet. After our next foray we´ll spend some time uploading and sending you out another round of pics.
I hope everyone had a great Christmas and a fun New Year to come.
Take care,
Felix
