Steph Davis
In the past two months, our problem has been not having enough to write about. Now it seems like there's almost too much to tell!

Two days before the full moon, we decided we had to get up to the snow caves and be in position. Our faith in the possibility of good weather after March 8 may seem superstitious. However, Carlos Comesana, the first ascensionist of the Super Canaleta, had been very convincing in his belief that the full moon can bring a change in the weather. And many seasoned Patagonia climbers maintain that the full moon is a sign of the weather to come--if the day of the full moon is bad weather, the trend for the next several days will be bad. If the full moon shows some decent weather, there may be a brief window coming. And it's not that ridiculous, really. The full moon affects the tides in the ocean, and the proximity of this place to oceans and icecaps is what makes the weather so horrendous. So up we went.

We spent two grim days in the snowcave, with more snow falling than I've ever seen in Patagonia (which is to say, a LOT). It was a little hard to sleep at night, fearing that the caves might collapse and that we would be buried there. Our most important piece of gear was the piss bottle, but it brought the inevitable moment that Shackleton's men experienced when they were trapped under the shelter of an upside-down wooden boat on Elephant Island using a bucket for the nighttime call of nature--when it's your turn to burrow out of the snow and empty it. But perhaps this is more information than you need…

We'd given up hope, and were trying to eat up our bivy food in preparation for packing up and going down. But the morning of March 9, the morning after the full moon, was clear and calm. Amazed and happy, we left Passo Superiour at 4 a.m. and headed out to Mermoz, hoping to climb the Red Pillar route. After over a week of outrageously bad storms, the glacier was in terrible condition. Even in our trusty snowshoes, we were sinking almost up to our knees. Still, the weather was good and we had to at least try. The cracks on Mermoz were looking suspiciously snowy and icy, but then again everything was. Good sense would have dictated some time waiting for the routes to melt out a little. Two months in Patagonia waiting for even a crumb of good weather dictated that we go NOW.

We wallowed desperately up the first snow field that led to the route, at times sinking into waist deep snow. It began to snow, and then turned to a full blizzard. Of course I felt depressed and annoyed, but we were completely sick of sitting in an ice cave, so we kept forcing our way up. Our stubbornness seemed rewarded when we reached the rock and the sun re-emerged. Unfortunately, the first two pitches of 5.10 (on the topo we had) were in fact mixed climbing, mostly ice. But that's nothing new this season. When we reached the third moderate pitch, it was a completely ice-choked crack. Dean made a valiant attempt to scrap up it, wearing Moccasyms with gaiters and instep crampons, using gloved hands and an ice hammer, but it was not happening. As we rapped and wallowed back down the snow, we realized the nasty reality. The rock was going to need several days of full sun to even begin to get into condition. And the air temperature was much colder than usual, perhaps because we're moving into Patagonian autumn, making it seem unlikely that much melting could really happen.

On the east side of the Fitz Roy range, there aren't any good ice routes up the peaks--we would need to be on the west side for that. We were both thinking the same thing (as usual, since we've been not more than two hundred feet apart from each other for two months)--that the only possibility for climbing anything might be to circumnavigate the Fitz Roy range and try for the Supercanaleta, which is mostly a snow climb that ends on easy rock up to the summit of Fitz Roy. Most people approach this route from the northwest (the Piedra del Fraile basecamp) or the west (the Bridwell Basecamp). However, we'd been told that it might be possible to cross the glacier on this east side, heading north to cross through the Passo Guillaumet, then arc around to the west and cross the Passo Cuadrado, and drop onto the glacier that leads to the base of the Super Couloir.

Obviously we weren't going to be able to do anything here, and this weather might only last for a day or so. The only possibility at all for climbing something in condition might be the Super Couloir. We wouldn't be missing anything here if we busted a move and at least tried to get over there. We had to try. As we trudged back to the snowcaves, we agreed to eat, repack, and immediately set out in hopes of finding our way to the northwest side before dark came.

We left Passo Superior at 5 p.m., going as light as we could. We brought a tiny stove and two fuel canisters, food for two to three days, and one puffball sleeping bag and bivy sack (and of course, our climbing gear). We cruised as fast as we could across the deep fresh snow, up to the Passo Guillaumet, and dropped down a huge rocky gully to the north onto another glacier. Looking at the three passes to the west, we couldn't tell which was Passo Cuadrado. We'd been warned not to take the wrong one. We reasoned that the first pass we saw was probably too high, perhaps taking us to the skirts of Guillaumet and Mermoz, and went for the second. Luckily, that was the right guess--it wasn't Passo Cuadrado, but it took us directly down to the glacier, and we hurried down a massive snow gully down to the northwest side of Fitz Roy. Dusk was falling, and the weather was clouding up a little. We'd been going for three hours (well, actually if you count the Mermoz start, for twelve hours) and dark was falling. We weren't quite sure where the route actually was, but really wanted to get somewhere before dark, instead of just in the middle of this huge glacial zone with no shelter. There was a slight and worrisome wind kicking in from the west. Incredible granite peaks rose high all around us--Pere Giorgio, Mermoz, Fitz Roy. As we dropped down the snow gully, we got an amazing view of Cerro Torre, Stanhardt, and Torre Egger out beyond Sitting Man Ridge, all completely cloaked in white, as we'd never seen them before. The Compressor Route was pure white.

We headed toward Sitting Man Ridge as fast as we could as it got dark. It was hard to identify all of the crevasses that were starting to punctuate the slight rise. We were roped together for safety, luckily, because I fell into a crevasse up to my chest. Thrashing around, trying to get some purchase with an ice tool to pull myself out, I got one leg tangled in the rope and flipped deeper, pinned under my pack. In my struggle to climb out, the digital camera came unclipped from my harness and wasn't as lucky as I was-so unfortunately, we don't have any digital photos from this last week of activity, only those on slide film on the other small point-and-shoot we brought. We reached a flat area with a few scattered boulders strewn about the snow, and realized we'd have to stop for the night. We didn't know where the Super Couloir was, had no information at all actually, and the weather seemed like it was deteriorating.

We went around to the east side of a boulder, to get some shelter from the disconcerting wind that was starting to blow cold snow onto us, and got the stove out. The water in my bottle had begun to slush freeze, despite the fact that I'd filled it with boiling water only four hours before and wrapped it in my puffball jacket. Yikes--it was going to be a cold night. We melted water for hot Tang and mashed potato flakes, and crammed ourselves into the sleeping bag and bivy sack. Jammed together, we tried to sleep as snow began to blow harder and force its way into the hole we needed to breathe. I was awake all night anyway, wiggling my toes inside my boots and flexing my calves to try to keep them from going numb. I was also worrying about how we were going to reverse all of the terrain we'd covered to get here. We'd been moving really fast, and had lost a lot of elevation to get here, and it had been a pretty hard four hours of movement. If it started to turn really bad, we were going to get worked.

Dave Anderson had given us his barometer before leaving, and we were perplexed to see that the pressure was steadily rising, despite the fact that the wind was kicking in and clouds were moving over from the west. As morning broke, we were greeted with a cold grey dawn, and lots of blowing snow. We packed up, but didn't want to leave without at least seeing the route. Walking was a joy, getting some blood flowing into our frozen limbs after such a grim open bivy. We headed up glacier, leaving only our snowshoes and poles at the boulder (just in case we decided to start climbing), and soon found ourselves at the base of the Supercanaleta. Above the first massive snow gully, the rock leading to the summit was completely white--coated in rime and snow. Obviously the route would not be in condition for the next few days either. This was starting to get frustrating. After waiting two months for a weather window, even if this was one, everything we wanted to climb was completely ice-choked. And the drop in the temperatures didn't make things look promising, especially with the clouds rolling in to interrupt any sun-blasting that could try to happen.

Analyzing our options, we decided that we needed to get back to Passo Superior. If the weather was going to get bad, we needed to get out of here. And if the weather was going to get good, maybe we could recover enough from this excursion to be ready to climb something back over there. We were really glad that we'd put in so many long, stormy climbing efforts in the last two months, so that now we had the fitness to keep in continuous motion.

In staring at the mountains from the snowcaves, Dean had noticed that the north face (the equivalent of a south face down here--sunny) of Poincinot was the only thing that looked like it was melting out in the sun. We had both also noticed lots of crack lines on that rock face running up above the notch that separates Poincinot from the ridge which runs over to Fitz Roy. We had also been noticing that this extremely snowy year made the steep terrain leading up to it look like climbable snow and ice. We decided to hustle back and try to be ready to set out for Poincinot by the next evening, and make an effort to climb its north face. Perhaps if we were able to do that and the weather lasted, the North Pillar of Fitz Roy, which was currently rimey white, would have had time to melt out too. With the best of luck, maybe we could climb Poincinot, rest a day, and then the North Pillar would be in condition and we'd get to climb that too. Who knows?

We got back to the snow caves after a hard slog up the two passes by five p.m. that night. Once again, we were thankful to have brought snowshoes this year. The weather had improved steadily throughout the day, and as we came over Passo Guillaumet we saw some climbers up on Guillaumet, who had approached it from the northwest side. They were really surprised to see us appear over the pass back onto the east side of the glacier, and called down to ask us if everything was all right. "We're fine!" we shouted back. It was pretty strange to be the only climbers basing out of Passo Superior. The only tracks on the entire east side of the glacier were the ones we'd made going back and forth from Mermoz, and going out to Passo Guillaumet.

Now we were starting to worry about our supply of food and fuel. What if this was a huge weather window, and it lasted for a week? We had about five days worth, and a small supply of Clif bars for climbing food. We'd been out and about for almost exactly thirty-six hours, and we were pretty tired. We wanted to eat huge, but were afraid of regretting it later. We decided to rely on the reserves we'd built up during the last ten days of sitting around at basecamp and eating for recreation, and shared only one pot of soup before dropping into bed. Perspective is a funny thing--the snow cave with a dry Bibler and warm sleeping bags felt unbelievably luxurious after a night out on a windy glacier behind a rock, crammed into a single bivy sack.

We spent the next day drying our clothes in the sun, and sitting on the boulders outside the cave, preparing for a nighttime start. This was the first time I'd completely enjoyed a sunny day for the last two months--either there hasn't been one, or we've been down low worrying that we need to hustle and get high. We lounged on the rocks, amazed that the air was still cold even in the direct sun. It was also amazing to be the only climbers in the entire vicinity, now that the weather was finally getting better. But the snow on the boulders beside us wasn't melting even in full sun. That did not bode well for routes getting in condition, and we felt sure that going to Poincinot was the best and only choice for us.

As far as either of us knew, there was no existing route on the north face of Poincinot. We knew that Greg Crouch and Jim Donini had done a route from the west side, more to the right of the lines we were looking at. And we knew some Swiss (?) had done a route more on the east, to the left of where we were looking, called Whiskeytime. But we could definitely see lines up the rock from the notch after the steep snow--perhaps in most years, there's not enough snow to climb up to it. It seemed like the best idea, the only idea really, and we were excited to go see what was up there. We knew that we had to go as light as possible or we'd never make it, especially in our current state. We shared another not-so-nourishing pot of soup and went to sleep by early afternoon, in order to be ready to get up at 1 a.m.

We left the snow caves in a perfect calm, starry night--the first night of completely perfect weather. The last two days had been good days, but had started off cloudy and stormy before developing into good weather. But tonight was perfect. We wore our lightest Gore-tex and brought only six Clif bars and a handful of Clif shots. We also decided that we would simul-climb the long snow and mixed gully up to the notch, Dean leading with two real ice tools, and me behind with two ice hammers. We didn't want to deplete our entire rack by rapping the route--if it was a new route, there would be no rap anchors, and we had climbed and rapped the Whillans route on the other side of Poincinot last year, so we decided to carry all of our ice gear up the rock and rap down the Whillans route if we made the summit. That meant we needed to go as light on tools and ice gear as possible, and it also meant that we would be pretty committed to getting to the top once we started. We weren't sure whether to hope for a new route or for an existing one. With no information, at this point, there was no difference.

We started up the snow and ice at 4 a.m., climbing with headlamps and the moonlight. As the snow steepened into almost vertical ice, I felt nervous simuling with my not-so-bomber ice hammers and called to Dean to try to put me on belay. We both knew there wasn't really any gear, as he had moved up into fairly steep neve again, but we both pretended that he was belaying me. Luckily the huge difference in our size and weight--Dean's 6'6" and two hundred pounds, and my 5'5" and a hundred and twenty-five pounds-makes Dean basically an anchor for me anyway, so simuling is relatively safe for us. But if we weren't able to climb all the way to the top of the peak, it was going to be really difficult to get back down this massive gully.

We moved continuously, staying warm, and reached the notch just as dawn broke at about 7:30. The sun is rising later and setting faster now--when we first arrived it came up around five in the morning and didn't go down until almost eleven at night. Colder weather and shorter days, but when the weather is good, who's complaining? From the notch, there was no crack system. Down and left about eighty feet, where we had just climbed up, we had passed a fairly new rappel bolt with a loop of rope on it at the base of a flat pillar. It seemed like our choices were to rappel into the unknown, down the west side and hope to reach a line there somewhere, or to rap back to that bolt and maybe climb an existing route up this side. We were actually kind of hoping to find an existing route here, and decided to go back down to the bolt and start up the pillar.

We decided to use Yosemite speed climbing techniques in order to stay in constant motion, both for warmth and speed. Dean started leading up the pillar, climbing in rock shoes and short fixing, while I kept my boots on and continuously jugged with the pack full of his size 13 mountain boots, ice gear, and extra clothing. This route was the right decision--we were in full sun, but a stiff breeze kept it quite cold, and there were still sections of ice choking some of the cracks. Everything else around was surely still out of condition. For the next four pitches, there was another nice new-ish bolt with a rap anchor at each belay stance, until we reached the top of the small pillar. There the crack stopped, and above us was a funky looking facey section with sparse protection, leading to a steep angling crack and a small roof. Dean headed up the face, finding minimal protection and hard free climbing, and was not surprised to find no bolt at the next stance below the steep crack. That crack turned out to be a little loose, and was pretty slow going, even with clean aid tactics. Over the roof, again no anchor. It looked like we were doing a new route after all--seemed like someone had started this route and had bailed off. Unless another party had come to it like us, light and fast leaving no anchors, we were definitely doing a first ascent. Now we just hoped we could find a way up to the summit.

After a few more pitches, we reached a huge gully. We looked up with sinking hearts to see two giant roof cracks leading out on either side of a massive blocky cut-out above us. A weird looking traverse out right seemed like the only salvation, but it turned out to lead only to loose and crumbling rock. We had to reverse it back to the gully and either go up through one of the roof cracks or down, and down didn't seem like an option at this point--it was now early afternoon, and getting back down that long ice and snow gully would be an epic. We had to get to the top. It seemed like we must be getting close, although there was no way of knowing without getting over the roofs. The wind was making it cold even in the sun, and another open bivy with only light Gore-tex and no stove was unappealing.

Miraculously, the left roof crack angled into a weird crevice. By crawling up into and behind it, and then riding the pony out along the top of a rock bridge up and out of it, we were able to extricate ourselves from the intimidating roof zone, and then discovered that this route was the perfect route--a final pitch of easy rock put us directly on the very summit. We didn't linger long. The wind was cold, and evening was coming. For the last two hours, I'd been able to see a few long distant clouds out to the west, and I had a feeling the weather was coming too. We rapped down the rock anchors on the other side, barely able to remember where they might be especially now that the Whillans was full of snow, and evening fell just as we reached the notch on Poincinot's south side. It was hard to find the anchors down the snow gully in the dark, and we were starting to feel exhausted. Clouds built up slowly and quietly, filling the night sky with smooth grey shapes like a sea of whales as a great orange moon slowly rose. The raps seemed endless, and we were cold.

Finally we found ourselves at the last rock anchor at the skirt of Poincinot. Last year the snow level had been much lower, and the final rappel had taken us over a giant bergshrund back onto walking snow. This year, we finished the rappel on steep stiff snow, and knew that the shrund was somewhere far below us. In the dark, it was impossible to figure out how to get safely down and over it. The grim reality was that we were going to have to traverse all the way below Poincinot's east face on steep snow and back climb all the way over to where we'd started climbing, almost twenty hours before. Roped together, we began moving right, kicking steps into the unconsolidated snow and shoving our ice picks in. Since we'd brought only one liter of water and eaten only two Clif bars each all day, we were feeling very depleted, almost in a zombie-like state. Again, I was thankful for the long climbing days we'd done in the bad weather. I was also glad it was dark, so we couldn't see the huge drop-offs, snow pits and crevasses down below us. That soft, unconsolidated steep snow with no anchors always scares me more than anything. It seemed like we would traverse and downclimb forever, until in my trance I got too close to Dean and let the rope loop down and catch under a stiff snowhorn on a crevasse below us. There was no choice but to untie and continue ropeless until I reached him. I tried not to think about falling, and silently begged my crampons not to skid out. It was a very long hundred and fifty feet. The safe, warm snowcave seemed a lifetime away.

After an eternity, we made it back down over the first bergshrund to where we'd left our snowshoes and ski poles. The moon was casting pale light between the grey whales, and a wind was starting to gust from the west. Clearly this window was over, but we were finally in the home stretch, with only an hour or so of easy trudging left. Exhausted, we snowshowed back to Pass Superieur, and reached our cozy Bibler at 3 a.m. Only a twenty-five hour excursion this time. We dropped into our sleeping bags and passed out, kind of relieved to wake to high winds and snow again outside the cave. That meant we could stop rationing and eat and drink a lot, but after so many days with huge activity and little nourishment we'd almost lost our appetites although our bodies felt weak and in need of calories. We spent a day resting and melting water to drink, and the weather stayed bad. We decided to pack up a load of non-essential items from our high camp and go down to eat and resupply. A fat meal of deep-fried veggie and tuna dumplings and warm vino tinto seemed like a just reward once we got back down here to Rio Blanco.

Our plan now is to eat and hydrate as much as possible, and head back up to the caves in the next day or two for our final week in Patagonia. Our goal at this point is to remain flexible--in this stormy season that seems like the only option. Either we'll go up to carry down a last load of gear, or we'll maybe climb something else. The weather has turned strangely warmer after all of these weeks of unusual cold. Who knows what will happen. We came here intending to bag summits, by climbing the easiest routes possible, on the Fitz Roy range, and instead to the best of our knowledge did a challenging new route on Poincinot. It's a crazy place, but a magic one. More than anything, we both feel so glad that at last our persistence has paid off.

— Steph Davis, MountainZone.com Correspondent