Cerro Torre

Cerro Torre is one of the mountains of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field in South America. It is located in a region which is disputed between Argentina and Chile, west of Cerro Chalten (also known as Fitz Roy). The peak is the highest in a four mountain chain: the other peaks are Torre Egger (2,685 m), Punta Herron, and Cerro Stanhardt. The top of the mountain often has a mushroom of rime ice, formed by the constant strong winds, increasing the difficulty of reaching the actual summit.

First ascent

Cesare Maestri claimed in 1959 that he and Toni Egger had reached the summit and that Egger had been swept to his death by an avalanche while they were descending. Inconsistencies in Maestri's account, and the lack of bolts, pitons or fixed ropes on the route, has led most mountaineers to doubt Maestri's claim. In 2005, Ermanno Salvaterra, Rolando Garibotti and Alessandro Beltrami, after many attempts by world-class Alpinists, put up a confirmed route on the face that Maestri claimed to have climbed.

Maestri went back to climb again Cerro Torre in 1970 together with Ezio Alimonta, Daniele Angeli, Claudio Baldessarri, Carlo Claus and Pietro Vidi, trying a new route on the southeast face. With the aid of a gas-powered compressor drill, Maestri equipped 350 m of rock with bolts and got to the end of the rocky part of the mountain, just below the ice mushroom. Maestri claimed that "the mushroom is not part of the mountain" and did not continue to the summit. The compressor was left, tied to the last bolts, 100 m below the top. The route Maestri followed is now famous as the Compressor route and was climbed again all the way to the summit in 1979 by Jim Bridwell and Steve Brewer. Most parties on the route consider the ascent complete only if they summit the ice-rime mushroom to the top.

The first undisputed ascent was made by the 1974 Italian expedition composed by Daniele Chiappa, Mario Conti, Casimiro Ferrari, and Pino Negri.


Subsequent ascents

• 1959 Cesare Maestri and Toni Egger (IT) - disputed ascent of West Face. Egger died.
• 1970 Maestri et al (IT), Compressor route to 60 meters below summit.
• 1974 Daniele Chiappa, Mario Conti, Casimiro Ferrari and Pino Negri (IT). First Undisputed Ascent.
• 1977 Dave Carman, John Bragg and Jay Wilson of the USA. First Alpine-style ascent.
• 1979 Jim Bridwell and Steve Brewer complete climb of Compressor Route.
• 1985 July 3–8 First Winter Ascent by Paolo Caruso, Maurizio Giarolli and Ermanno Salvaterra (IT).
• 1985 November 26 Compressor route - first solo by Marco Pedrini (Swiss). Filmed by Fulvio Mariani: Cerro Torre Cumbre.
• 2004 Five Years to Paradise (ED:VI 5.10b A2 95deg, 1000m) (right center on East Face): Ermanno Salvaterra, Alessandro Beltrami, and Giacomo Rossetti (all from Italy).
  

In popular culture

Cerro Torre was featured in the 1991 film Scream of Stone, directed by Werner Herzog and starring Vittorio Mezzogiorno, Hans Kammerlander, and Donald Sutherland.

Jon Krakauer, in Into Thin Air, mentions the mountain as one of his earlier difficult ascents (1992): "I'd scaled a frightening, mile-high spike of vertical and overhanging granite called Cerro Torre; buffeted by hundred-knot winds, plastered with frangible atmospheric rime, it was once (though no longer) thought to be the world's hardest mountain".