Climbing until midnight, we finally reached the top of the North Pillar. We chopped ledges in some ice bulges for our bivy. Full moon, still no wind. Gazing out over the moonlit landscape, I knew we were in the midst of a fair weather spell that Patagonia climbers dream about.

The next morning we rapped into the notch and looked up at the final headwall. It wasn't too hard to see why some parties turn back. The face looked terribly steep, with rime ice bulges and hanging ice falls and generally scary looking gnarliness everywhere.

The sun was out in force, so the ice was beginning to fall. Our closest call came on the first pitch out of the notch, when the crack system we had been on just 10 minutes before got hammered by ice fall. Whew.

We followed wide yet relatively moderate cracks for four pitches, then wandered over ice, snow, rock, and rushing waterfalls to the top. We summited at 6pm. After a short food and photo break, we descended the Franco-Argentine Route, partly so we could claim a traverse of the peak, but mostly because I knew the route from last year and rapping the North Pillar would have been a nightmare.

We found the first anchor by following tracks left in the snow by another party. Even though I'd rappelled the same route the year before, it would have been very difficult to find without the tracks. The southern slope of the summit is a sea of snow, ice, and rock devoid of any defining feature. After a relatively pleasant evening of rappelling, we spent a night at the notch on the south side (the bretcha) and finished rappelling the next morning.

My hand was puffed up pretty bad by then, the knuckles turned to dimples. Ben pulled the ropes on the rappels while I watched, idly nursing my hand.