In January this year, Jacob Cook became the first British climber to complete the Care Bear Traverse, a link up of the first three summits of the infamous Fitz Roy Traverse. Climbing alongside good friend Tyler Karow, Jacob endured a series of unexpected challenges, both physical and psychological. Read his account of the expedition below.

As I navigated my seemingly endless journey to El Chalten, a weather window was taking shape, a huge one.

I'd made plans to climb with Tyler Karow, who I'd met a year ago here in Patagonia, but - as far as I knew - Tyler was still high on the wall on the Central Tower in Torres Del Paine. He wasn't supposed to be arriving until a few days after me… until I got an excited phone call:

'Dude, I just got down from the wall, I'm arriving in Chalten tonight at 2am, how do you feel about the Care Bear starting tomorrow afternoon?'

The Care Bear is a climbers' name for the ridgeline traverse, going up and over the summits of Guillamet, Mermoz, and the Pillar Goretta, and ending on the summit of Cerro Chalten (aka Fitzroy). The first half of the famous Fitz Traverse…

Tyler probably has more energy than anyone else I know. No-one in their right mind would spend ten days on a Patagonian big wall, then two days later (including hiking out and travelling) start a traverse of this scale. However, weather windows in El Chalten are scarce, and Tyler knew as well as I did that this might be the best chance we'd get all season.

The next morning I woke up with a sore throat and a slight fever, but we decided to begin the traverse anyway and see how I got on. We packed aggressively light, leaving behind anything non-essential and seriously considering exactly how 'essential' every individual remaining item actually was. In the end our bags weighed under 15kg each, including ropes, gear, food for four days, tent, and sleeping bags.

Arriving at Paso Guillamet at 6:30pm we simul-climbed up the Brenner-Moschioni route to the summit of Guillamet and bivvied with spectacular sunset views of the whole range.

The next day I was feeling good. Hoping that I'd kept my sickness at bay, we followed the long ridgeline down, and then simul-climbed up the top half of the spectacular Argentinian route on Mermoz. Up to the summit of Mermoz, known as the Motocross Traverse, was familiar ground for me, having climbed this part last year with my friend Shira Biner.

Looking south into new terrain, the ridgeline continued for a long way until it met abruptly with the Pillar Gorretta and the north face of Fitzroy - a big wall of El Capitan scale, only unlike the Californian pine trees, the summit was coated in ice. Even the vertical walls near the top had thick chunks of rime hanging from their sides.

The crux of an undertaking of this scale is not the difficulty of any specific pitch or section, but more the ability to fluidly switch between every kind of mountain skill without a hiccup and without slowing down. Simul-climb here, a short rappel there, a pitch of climbing, cross a snowfield, more simul-climbing, a weird sideways rappel, put the rope away and scramble… Climbing shoes on here, now approach shoes, now crampons…

Using all our combined mountain-sense, we aced the complex terrain across to Fitzroy. Navigating up, over, or around countless gendarmes and down to the 'Bloque empotrada' at the base of the pillar Goretta. It felt amazing to be flowing through the mountains with not only technically the best partner I could ask for, but also a good friend. Tyler and I see the world very similarly and our conversations are wide-ranging and endless.

We paused at the Bloque. It was 6pm. We filled our water bottles from a trickle, and discussed what to do. We were both tired, but there was a bivy ledge twelve pitches up that would put us in great shape to summit the next day. We went for it. Switching into Yosemite-style speed-climbing mode, we short-fixed up the wall. I led the first block; arriving at each anchor I'd pull up the remaining rope and fix it for Tyler to jumar with the heavier bag, while he did that I'd start the next pitch on self-belay.

Tyler took the harder, wetter second block and led us into the night. We arrived at the ledge around 11pm to find Colin Haley already bivvied there on his solo of Mate, Porro y Todo lo Demás. It was cool to meet one of my heroes, but also a shame he'd already taken the only flat bivy spot!

After two days of huge energy expenditure, I awoke bivvied halfway up the Pillar Goretta with a full blown fever. Probably covid. I explained to Tyler that two 'Jacobs' in my condition would 100% be bailing, but if he wanted to keep going up I would attempt to jumar behind with the bag.

Tyler put on an amazing show, leading quickly and efficiently through the summit pitches in a full waterfall, threatened by icefall. It was a privilege to watch someone in their element like that - clearly this was a man doing exactly what he was born to do.

High on the mountain we caught up with our friends Thomas Bukowski and Jonathon Guy who had climbed the North Pillar via Mate, Porro y Todo lo Demás. We joked about passing them Yosemite style. 'HEY WHERE ARE YOU FROM? IS THIS YOUR FIRST TIME ON FITZROY???' But in all honesty it felt amazing to see familiar faces in a seriously intense environment.

Near the top we switched into approach shoes and strap-on crampons to navigate the summit ice slopes. I simul-climbed behind Tyler, the rope running through our single ice-screw. Cold, feverish, and exhausted, I staggered onto the summit.

That night while all bivvied on the summit, we got news that two climbers had died descending from La Brecha that day (part of our descent). This combined with our friend John Bolte's death in the same place last year led to an extremely stressful following day.

We descended the Franco-Argentina with our friends as a team of four. Then waited all day above La Brecha gully for it to go into the shade. We listened to music and tried to keep conversation light, but in the back of my mind I couldn't shake the thought that there was a very real possibility one or more of us would die that evening.

The descent from La Brecha down to the glacier is down a narrow gully, which used to be full of thick ice, but in recent years global warming has melted out the perma-frost and left a rubble of broken choss and tottering blocks. A perfect terrain trap. We decided to split back up into two teams of two to minimise the chance of kicking rocks on each other; Tyler and I would go first and once Thomas and Jonathon saw us on the glacier they'd begin their descent.

At 7pm, as Tyler and I rapped into the gulley, I was literally shaking with fear. I think in my early years as a climber I had a kind of mental 'armour' where I could do things I knew were dangerous but somehow rationalise it away. That armour is gone now. Rather than knowing academically that things are dangerous, I can vividly picture the consequences… After too many close calls and dead friends, in recent years my mentality in the alpine easily slips into that of a small scared animal, seeing everything in my environment as a threat.

We ran across the glacier, through the avalanche debris that had swept two climbers into a crevasse the previous day. Honestly, the frequency with which people die and the extent to which the mountains are decomposing within each warm weather window, makes climbing in Patagonia feel almost suicidal. It's so hard to reconcile this with the beauty and meaning to be found in peak experiences like this. I've built a life around my passion for climbing, the connections I've made with partners like Tyler and the virtue to be found in doing hard things. If I'm not an adventure climber, then who exactly am I?

Slowly the ice and rock was replaced by lakes and trees. As I fruitlessly tried to keep up with Tyler on the trail, I began to feel intensely grateful to be where I was, both for being surrounded by beautiful mountains, and for no longer being in them! Nowhere else in my life have I experienced such profound cognitive dissonance; my thoughts flitted between the blissful flow of moving effortlessly through this jagged landscape and the animalistic terror I had experienced on our descent.

Despite achieving our objective, I don't think I consider our climb a success. While nothing physically went wrong, it can't be healthy to subject my brain to that kind of experience on a regular basis.

After spending a few days in town, I realised there was no way I could put myself through going back out into the mountains this season and decided to leave early. The following days were spent oscillating between researching travel out of Argentina and re-checking the weather forecast in El Chalten.

Maybe if we had a longer window and I wasn't sick, we could have kept going?

Watch Tyler Karow's film of the traverse below: