Enduring Patagonia by Gregory Crouch

Author:Gregory Crouch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction
ISBN: 9781588360656
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2002-03-05T05:00:00+00:00

LA TIERRA DESCONOCIDA: THE UNKNOWN COUNTRY

Change is a fact of our world like the sunrise, and the cosmologists tell us even that won’t happen forever. In the mountains, the wide rivers of ice, so seemingly motionless, move, full of turbulence and eddies and rapids and runs. Man seldom sees the glaciers move, but to the great granite obelisks the torrents of ice must pass in a wild frozen blur. Even the mountains themselves change, albeit at the pace of continental drift, shedding a layer of skin here, the blemish of a few boulders there, not appreciably smaller, but never quite the same. In our constant struggle to create security in a chaotic universe, most humans take root, set their feet in stone, and fight change. But change is a most implacable foe, one certain to sweep even his most conservative opponent into unknown seas. I embraced another big change nine months after Cerro Torre and right before I returned to Patagonia—I got married. Three Patagonian expeditions had taught me the value of opportunity, and DeAnne was my golden one. With her I share the ultimate base camp.

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In mid-November, Jim Donini and I came to Patagonia intent on bagging a new route, fixed on climbing a mountain feature that had never been ascended before. Jim had made stacks of alpine first ascents; I’d made only one, which Jim and I scored together in the Alaska Range, a wild ride up the South Face of Mt. Bradley in the Ruth Gorge near Mt. McKinley. Except possibly in the case of an established route that has acquired a reputation as a terrifying and dangerous horror show, first ascents are more complicated and intimidating than repeats. Every detail of a first ascent is harder. Fear of the unknown bears down on the minds of first ascensionists. They have no topo—the detailed sketch that maps an established climb—which makes accurate planning difficult. An inadequate supply of hardware can halt an ascent, and not knowing what obstacles lie ahead tends to make climbers take more hardware for a wider variety of crack sizes. More equipment means more weight, which means climbing slower, which in itself requires a larger supply of equipment (food, clothing, stoves, fuel, perhaps bivy gear). And as alpinists try to ferret out a viable line of ascent up unknown terrain it is easy to choose the wrong way and climb into a vertical cul-de-sac with no way to continue above. In my last two southern seasons I’d got myself out from under the spell of the two greatest Patagonian summits, so this year I was free to blaze my own trail, and I screwed up my courage enough to try.

Storms raged for seventeen days after we arrived. Torrents of rain fell on base camp and nobody went climbing. Standard operating procedure in Patagonia. Finally, there was a half-day lull. Jim and I humped ropes, hardware, a tent, and two weeks of supplies up to a camp high in the cirque across from Cerro Torre and directly below Torre Innominata, determined to get some good weather.

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