After spending a day fraught with language difficulties and route finding on Aguja Mermoz, Ben was understandably in poor spirits. My hand was pretty much the same, but we organized our gear in our snow cave and decided to continue fixing rope.

The next morning I led an A3 pitch that took us over a roof and out of the dihedral. I took a short daisy chain fall early in the pitch, then an eight-meter whipper when the edge of the crack I was in blew out. I was fine, but went a little slower after that.

Ben led another pitch and we found a fantastic bivy site. A huge flake, separated from the wall, was filled in behind, providing a level surface surrounded by rock walls on all sides. My hand felt okay, so we went down and returned the next afternoon with bivy gear and food for three nights.

We spent a night on top of our lines, and then on February 19, blasted upward. We ran into the old Casarotto line after two more pitches, which was a little bit of a bummer, but it was the best line to take, so we took it. We found that the Casarotto Route has a lot of wide cracks. Ben did a great job on a poorly protected 5.10 off-width flare. Yuck!

We wondered at Casarotto's feat, as he had soloed the route in 1979, long before camming devices had become "mandatory" gear for off-width cracks. We also wondered at all the junk he left on the route.

Seconding on jugs with a huge pack sucked, but it was a great day. Many pitches included stunning hand cracks. The sun shined all day; there was no wind. We drank meltwater through our blow tube at belays and laughed at our good fortune.