Hey Everyone,
What a crazy week it’s been down here in the land of wind & rock. The weather has been really fooling everyone lately, yet we embarked on another foray to the Torre Valley. We were a bit disappointed to see all the walls plastered with fresh snow & rime ice as we had already hung up our crampons and planned on rock climbing.
The amount of people was shocking, especially considering almost everyone was going for the same 2 lower elevation routes we wanted to do. So Erik and I decided to check out the N. Ridge of Aguja de la “S” instead since it had a much longer approach and deterred most folks from heading up there. Of course, being rookies we made a series of rookie mistakes-par for the course. It started with us taking gear for conditions we hoped to encounter and not what we should have known they would be like. We took only approach shoes and aluminum crampons and no ice axes for the long approack couloir which was plastered with fresh snow and a fine layer of verglas on almost all the exposed rocks. We then fought our way up a chockstone-choked chimney instead of taking the proper “easy” gully. The mistakes continued when we elected to climb a steep, sketchy rock face for the 1st pitch instead of taking the easy terrain. The route then follows an easy rock ridge and talus walk to the upper spire. We knew we were hosed when it was plastered with fresh snow and we had to belay it, but we figured we ought to at least give it a try after the heinous approach we endured. The climbing on the ridge was awesome-except for all the snow and ice in the cracks. Unfortunately, every crack that was hand-sized or larger was filled with snow. After excavating the snow we discovered the cracks were lined with ice-not the ideal placement for cams. We “enjoyed” a little more than 2 pitches in this fashion when we finally elected to bail due to the time consuming nature of the climbing and protection. We felt dumb for bailing in perfect weather but as Carmela Soprano says “What are you gonna do?”.
We felt a bit vindicated the next day when the weather was crappy since a lot of other folks had elected to wait a day for conditions to improve. The camp nearly emptied as a news of a new forecast circulated that predicted an oncoming storm. We decided to hang out and see what would happen. Turns out we gambled correctly and awoke to an awesome patagonian sunrise and the promise of a great day. We headed out with our friends Joel & Neil to El Mocho. Erik & I went for the E. Buttress which we had all to ourselves. 2 days earlier it had 12 people on it! Joel & Neil went for a parallel buttress since Joel had already climbed the route we were on. The climbing was fantastic! We were finally having the experience we came here for. Steep, immaculate cracks and corners led up the right side of the distinctive big wall on El Mocho. The sun was shining and we were sending – Patagonia at it’s finest. We topped out on a large ledge about 3/4 of the way up and could see our friends on the top of a pillar across from us. We hooted & hollered to each other and re-racked for the next pitch. As Erik was starting out Joel began yelling to us. After the echoes subsided we deciphered the message-”Accident on Media Luna, victim is unresponsive!”. Erik & I looked up towards the summit, around us at the perfect weather, and then at each other and nodded in agreement, we were heading down. We all descended immediately and hiked up to where the accident occured. This took us about 4 hours to do and we were the 1st people on the scene.
The guy who fell was a young (+/- 24 yrs) Argentine with an American buddy. They were attempting to have him walk when the 4 of us showed up. Erik is an EMT and Joel is a WFR & mountain guide so they took over and had the guy lay down on a foam sleeping pad we grabbed from a campsite on the way up. The victim (Augustin) had blood all over his face since he wasn’t wearing a helmet when he fell, and a leg broken in a few places but he was conscious and in good spirits. We splinted his leg with another foam pad we cut up and some ski poles and then started constructing a stretcher out of more ski poles that we lashed together with rope, cord, and duct tape. We then covered it with backpacks and laid him and the pad he was on on top. We then covered him with extra jackets and with 4 more Argentine climbers who showed up we started carrying him down. He was a long way and several thousand feet above camp on a really loose moraine composed of sand and loose rocks of all sizes. It was brutal work carrying him since there were only 10 of us and we couldn’t really rotate out of carrying very much. We slipped and fell often but never dropped Augustin. We finally stopped at about 11pm since it was too dark and we were too tired to continue. A few people had descended to camp and alerted other people who brought up sleeping bags and food for Augustin and his partner. Luckily they also had a 2-way radio and were able to contact the Park Service who started organizing a rescue from town. The rescue crew left town on foot at midnight and arrived at camp at 6:30am. They had come with about 20 people and a real stretcher. They brought him the rest of the way down to camp and the remaining 15 miles back to town including several miles on some brutal terrain over more glaciers. As for us we got back to camp at about 12:30am thoroughly exhausted. We had all left various things with the victim but the rescue crew brought them all back to us the next morning on their way out. The weather was still really good but we were trashed and knew we couldn’t climb anymore so we hiked out that same day too. The whole town was buzzing with news about the rescue and apparently every agency including the police, army, park service, and many climbers participated in the rescue.
I remember the disappointment at thinking we couldn’t finish our climb on one of the rare perfect days. But I am much more satisfied at our efforts to help this young man, especially considering we were the first to respond and provide the critical stabilizing and intial extraction from one of the most remote locations within the range. A lot of other people recognized our sacrifice and efforts and were really gracious and gave us a real sense of citizenship.
So now the weather continues to be good and we’re trying to rest and recover and see if we can get back into the mountains before the wind returns.
