The East Face of Fitz in a Push
I met Colin Haley for the first time on a bivy ledge about two thirds of the way up Cerro Chaltén during the previous weather window. Jacob Cook and I were traversing from Paso Guillaumet to the summit of Cerro Chaltén via the Care Bear Traverse and Colin was soloing the route with the best name in all of Patagonia… Mate, Porro, y Todo lo Demás. Our routes climbed in close proximity and we spent most of the next day within eye or earshot of each other. A few days after getting down, Jacob made the decision that he was done climbing in Patagonia for the season and coincidentally, Colin asked if I would be interested in climbing… quality timing. We strategized potential options and as a weather window came near we landed on a plan to attempt the East Face of Cerro Chaltén. At first, we didn’t have a particular route in mind but we eventually settled on attempting El Corazón in a push. The route is over 4000 feet long, sustained at 5.10-5.11 with a tad of harder stuff, always wet, often icy, and legitimately one of the most aesthetic lines in the Chaltén Massif. The weather window wasn’t looking very solid showing higher than ideal winds, and a decent amount of cloud coverage that likely wouldn’t allow the previous storm’s snow and ice to properly shed from the walls. Regardless, we knew that the east face would provide a good amount of protection from the wind, and assuming the conditions of the route were good enough, I knew there was a decent chance of success.
We spent two full days strategizing, packing, and weighing every piece of gear to ensure everything was optimized for our mission. Rolo picked us up the next morning and Colin and I cramped into the back of his truck along with five of the best female European Alpinists and one of their kind friends who volunteered to help carry a load. On our way to the trailhead, we stopped for a view of the east face of Fitz, and after a quick look, Rolo offered to drive us back to town to rethink our objective. The wall was completely plastered in snow and ice and appeared far from climbable. The winds were raging at the trailhead and I stood there looking through binoculars at the wall while freezing my ass off in shorts, a sun hoodie, and amazingly absurd socks curtesy of Thomas Burkowski. Colin and I agreed to stick with the plan knowing that there were still some decent other options in the glacier superior basin. As we finally unloaded at Rio Electrico, I couldn’t help but laugh to myself at the absurdity of the entire situation… I looked completely unprepared in my atypical hiking outfit but I was with Colin Haley… these Euro Alpinists must had been very confused.
Within 30 seconds of beginning the hike, I witnessed a 50 or so year old woman fully biff it on a river crossing and submerge more than half her body. I offered a hand and then caught up with Colin on the trail. Colin clarified that he likes to take approaches slowly with lots of breaks and that was certainly the case. My inability to sit still was noticeable but Colin clearly didn’t seem to care as I waited for him to eat snack after snack at a snail’s pace on many of these luxurious pauses. We moseyed our way up to Laguna de Los Tres in the mid-day sun where I felt quite grateful to be in shorts. We finally made it to the base of the east face after chatting the whole time in quality conversation. We ate lots of food, took numerous breaks, and as a result, the slog actually felt mellow… perhaps Colin is onto something.
As we arrived to base of the route early Monday evening, we gazed up at icy cracks and snowy ledges. It appeared unlikely that our plan A would go. Colin selected a nice camp spot on the glacier in between two massive crevasses and began working on a tent platform as I boiled snow for water. Our plan was to begin our climb the next morning but we opted to take a rest day instead. We both slept over 10 hours and enjoyed a rest day on the glacier in full “chill” mode. A storm was forecasted to roll in Thursday morning so we had a single day on Wednesday to get in a climb of some sort. We put some thought into going for the “Potter-Davis”, a route on the North Face of Poincenot that is known as Patagonia’s Rostrum. However, a weather update on our rest day indicated the early morning storm on Thursday had pushed back to 6am. In addition, it appeared that some of the snow and ice had shed from the route and it would be in a better condition on Wednesday. Those two items along with some extra motivation on my end convinced Colin that the East Face was a go. We set the alarms for 3am with the plan of starting the climb at 4am and summiting no later than 3am. From the summit, our plan was to rappel the Franco-Argentina.
Our strategy was to short fix the entire route climbing it in 3 blocks. Colin would take the first section of more moderate but wet climbing to the top of the big snow ledge, I would take the middle section of the steeper sustained Yosemite-like climbing, and Colin would finish up on the upper pitches. Colin got more pitches on complex terrain, I got harder pitches up splitter cracks… it felt like a good break up for our skills. We opted to bring a double rack from .2 to 3, a single .1, 4, and triples of .3 to 1. The leader also carried a single alpine aider and occasionally a light ice tool. We brought a Gri Gri for belaying and one for short fixing. The follower jugged every pitch with a pack and would tag up the rack that was cleaned to the leader on a 32 meter Pur Line. We climbed with a 70m rope which is adequate to rap the Franco and when paired with the 32 meter Pur Line, good enough (we learned) to bail down Royal Flush (the route next door).
We began a few minutes after 4 am with Colin leading three approach pitches of low angle choss and mixed terrain. Eventually we made it to the El Corazon crack system and Colin began motoring up to the Aquarian roof… a pitch notoriously wet that would probably only go at 5.11 if it ever stopped dripping. Colin continued climbing up icy and wet pitches to a big snowy ledge system. I put on my climbing shoes and began climbing as quickly as I could pitch after pitch. The first 5 or so were completely dry but after that, they were often filled with ice. I was forced to hack out ice in order to place gear or even get a jam. I was often forced to resort to full aid climbing mode even on easier pitches. My first whip came while sitting on a marginally placed cam in an icy crack while I was refilling gear. It was small and uneventful and I quickly started climbing again.
This pitch was filled with ice and was also a continuous hand crack. I hacked out ice with a #2 every move before inserting it into the crack and pulling on it. The pitch likely would be taken 5 to 10 minutes in dry conditions but it likely took me 30 or so. (Photo: Colin Haley)
I continued climbing splitter after splitter of amazing golden granite as I reached the heart shaped rock feature that the route is named after. The original route climbs straight up and requires a bunch of bat hooking but iron is heavy and we don’t have time for that. My original plan was to climb the 6b+ R slab variation that Nico and Sean put up but as Colin agreed, it looked completely fucked. Instead we went for the combo option, opting to climb most of the next pitch straight up, build an anchor and lower down to tension traverse through all the scary climbing to where I could climb on lower angle slabs. Colin pulled himself in on the tag line and we met back up just above one of the bolted anchors of Royal Flush. Two pitches later while French freeing through an icy crack, my foot slipped and I fully fell backwards while trying to grab my aider attached to a bomber cam. I had back cleaned a number of pieces above the last piece of gear that was clipped and I fell around 30 feet head first until the rope came tight. Colin was jolted upward as I met him back near the belay. Luckily I was completely fine other than some small scrapes on my fingers. The first fall didn’t bother me because I knew the cam was bad and there was literally another one 6 inches below it but this fall really upset me. It was irresponsible and could have been very serious if I were to have broken an ankle or something even worse.
I still had 2 pitches to go and they went a bit slower as a result. I made it to the top of my lead block having climbing for nearly 10 hours straight. I was happy to take off my completely saturated climbing shoes and put back on my warm socks and approach shoes.
Colin began leading and after a few pitches the headlamps were turned on. The terrain was not straight forward and even more icy than my pitches. As the sun was setting, I recall seeing storm clouds build on the horizon. A thought popped into my head that the storm was perhaps arriving sooner than expected but that thought quickly faded away as I focused on the climb. Maybe 30 minutes later, it began to snow ever so slightly and the winds were noticeably picking up. I arrived at a belay and we both acknowledged the storm was rolling in early. Colin climbed another pitch and by the time I arrived at the belay, we discussed our options. We had 4 pitches of moderate rock to the summit snow slopes which would lead us to a rappel route that was quick and we were both very familiar with. It was temping but the storm was getting worse so we choose to bail down the east face. We quickly found ourselves in a very serious situation rappelling down unknown terrain without a full sized tagline, prepared to ditch the entire rack. After each rappel, I would stomp my mesh approach shoes against the rock to remove snow build up. I carried no hard-shell jacket or pants but luckily it was windy and cold enough that my clothes never got saturated. My fingers and toes would go numb and all I could do was hope that each rope pull didn’t result in a snag so that we could keep on moving down to stay warm.
I’ve always taken pride in my rappelling abilities and almost always take the lead while bailing or rapping but this time, I was fully in the passenger seat, and happy to be there. It was incredibly stressful feeling so out there in a storm, and honestly I was a bit scared. We rappelled something like 4000 feet through the night and arrived back on the glacier at 9am. The storm had finally cleared up around 6am which was just in time for us to watch a beautiful sunrise.
Our bail actually went relatively smoothly but it did not take long for us to acknowledge that we had pushed it way too far. A 3 hour weather buffer on a huge big wall in Patagonia is not acceptable and while going super light did allow us to go fast, it also increases the margin for disaster. So what led us to make the wrong decision? Overconfidence certainly played a role but I can’t help but think that my over-stoked personality did as well. Regardless of the reason, climbing with Colin provided me with one of the best learning experiences I’ve had in the mountains.
