Patagonia-Chili and Argentina
Fitz Roy-5,000' Rock Climb
Mt Fitzroy (Argentina) 11,171' - first climbed by Lionel Terray and Guido Magnone (1952). It took them two months, spent surveying and figuring out complicated logistics as it was very remote location. The little town of El Chaten didn't even exist until 1995. Fellow French climber, Jacques Poincenot drowned while trying to cross the Fitz Roy river. Only got short glimpse of Cerro Torre as it was obscured by clouds. As Kelly Cordes wrote in his book, The Tower: ”Unlike other storied alpine ranges, the challenges of Patagonia have nothing to do with altitude…Nowhere on Mount Everest or K2 –- not even on their hardest routes –- nor on any of the alpine ice routes in the Alps, will you find such sustained vertical climbing as on Cerro Torre’s ‘easiest’ route.”
