Americans Zack Smith and Josh Wharton made a bold attempt to climb the Southeast Ridge of Cerro Torre in Patagonia without using the protection bolts that were power-drilled by Cesare Maestri during his 1970 attempt on the granite needle. Maestri's “Compressor Route” has become the standard route on the mountain, but it relies on hundreds of feet of artificial bolt ladders.
On February 18, Smith and Wharton climbed the ridge without clipping any protection bolts until the route's 400-foot final headwall.
No they haven't. They have tried to climb an alternative route, with some shared pitches. BTW respect to them for doing anything down in Patagonia but some realism in reporting would be good :-)
Yep I read it. "They avoided Maestri’s 300-foot bolt traverse with a pitch of A2 and two pitches of 5.10+ R face climbing, a variation pioneered earlier by Ermanno Salvaterra. They also bypassed the 230-foot bolt ladder that gains the headwall via an ice chimney, likely a previously unclimbed line. Other bolts were skipped via minor variations or by using removable gear instead of bolts" The key phrases are 'avoided', 'variation', 'bypassed' etc. What they did was excellent and what Maestri did wasn't. No question. But they were attempting a new route (or variation) on the SE Ridge of Cerro Terro. Not a clean ascent of the Compressor Route. 500+ft of variation is not the same route now is it. Graeme
Write up at Alpinist.com http://www.alpinist.com/doc/ALP18/newswire-cerro-torre-compressor-wharton-smith "Wharton also noted that the excessive bolting—there are about 450 bolts on Maestri's line—could, relatively safely, be reduced to fewer than twenty. "I'm glad we climbed so much of the route without bolts," Wharton said. "I'm also excited to see that the 120 meter headwall (in better conditions) will go with perhaps only 30 meters of aid—20 of which are the legitimate aid climbing of the Bridwell pitch. And I thought we did a great job struggling onto the top in horrendous weather. I'm disappointed, however, that in the end we took the easy way out, using the bolts to gain the top in what would otherwise have been unclimbable conditions. Human laziness, and coveting the easy way to the top is a sad piece of the Compressor Route story, and although Zach and I nearly avoided this path, in the end we fell just short. So for me the southeast ridge still needs some attention, and our ascent of the peak, despite many hearty congrats, will feel a bit bittersweet."
Comments