storm. Descending their fi xed lines down the steepest section of wall, they had to pull themselves down the ropes as the updraft was so strong. By the time they reached the ridge, they had no further rope to descend, and were stranded for several days, nearly hypothermic, 250m above the glacier until the weather abated enough to allow them to recover a rope. This time Twid was better prepared and ready to endure once more.
The next day we reached the base of the South Face. As we gazed up at the wall, following months of planning, Raphael asked: “Where do the other routes go?” He hadn’t quite grasped that there could be an unclimbed wall as large as this left in Patagonia. We had decided to climb by fi xing ropes from our highpoints, thus enabling a rapid descent in the case of a storm. Climbing alpine style on a wall like this would require a good forecast for multiple days, something we couldn’t guarantee. As it happened, one day of good weather would be optimistic. Our fi rst day was cold: snow and ice lay on the lower slabs and, despite the modest diffi culty, climbing shoes
"An almighty gust came, lifting the tent up with me inside." Advanced base camp
beneath the South Tower of Paine.
Jerry Gore: descending the South Tower of Paine in a storm.
Twid Turner belays near the highpoint of the South Face as a storm moves in.
were necessary to advance up the tenuous ground. Balanced on a small ledge several metres above the snow slopes, I made the transition between warm mountain boots and thin rock shoes. By the time my mountain boots went back on at the top of the fi rst pitch, my toes were knuckle white and I began to realise just how optimistic our free climbing ideas were.
Our pace was slow: continuously poor weather and
diffi cult climbing up friable granite meant that we couldn’t hurry. Diffi cult aid pitches stacked up on top of each other and ground that could be covered quickly in good weather seemed to take an eternity. But with one week left, only several pitches remained to reach the top of the wall, followed by 200 metres of scrambling to the summit. Success seemed almost inevitable, yet in Patagonia, you should never count your chickens until they’ve hatched – because the chances are they’ve probably just blown away. Over the following few days, the weather moved back
in, keeping us tent-bound. The wind was relentless; the noise of fl apping fabric so loud you could barely sleep.
SUMMIT#73 | SPRING 2014 | 47
PHOTOS: CALUM MUSKETT.
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