Chilean expedition conquers emblematic peak in Patagonia

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Chilean expedition conquers emblematic peak in Patagonia

Temperatures well under the freezing point, and winds capable of bringing down tries were some of the tough climate conditions the Chilean mountain climbers had to endure in order to reach and conquer one of the most difficult heights in the Chilean Patagonia: the Paine Grande Hill.

Three brave climbers took part on this expedition: Camilo Rada, María Paz Ibarra and Sebastián Irarrázaval. They succeeded in reaching the top of the Paine Grande Hill, which is 3,050 meters high. The hill is part of a group of mountains after which the National Park Torres del Paine (in English: Paine Towers) was named.

Even when, in absolute terms, 3,050 meters is a moderate height for mountain climbing, the cold reached -30 degrees Celsius (or -22 degrees Farenheit), and the wind went as fast as 100 kilometers per hour (or approximately 62 miles per hour). These extreme climate conditions turned the climbing into a risky enterprise.

Climbing the Paine Grande Hill is normally considered a complex ascension. It is for this reason that, until the past 17 of August –when the mentioned climbing took place – only two groups of foreign sport amateurs had accomplished it. These were a group of Italians in 1957, and a French-Argentinian couple in 2000.

The current group, composed of the three mentioned Chilean mountain climbers, had already tried going up this hill in 2010. That attempt was failed, and they had to stop when they were only 90 meters from the top. According to the three excursionists, this time they took advantage of the climatic stability of the southern winter to get around the unevenness and the ice trails.

As Camilo Rada said to Santiago’s morning newspaper El Mercurio, the group will focus its challenges in the southern tip of Chile: “the regions of Magallanes and Aysén are full of mountains which do not even have a name, and which open a wide range of options for this sport,” he explained.

His teammate Sebastián Irarrázaval added that “the tendency in worldwide mountaineering must center in this place. Even when these are not high hills, they are very complicated and require a lot of technique, which transforms them in a greater challenge for those who love this discipline.”

The climber also explained that their plan for the year 2012 is to conquer the Sarmiento Hill. With a total height of 2,246 meters, Sarmiento was qualified as “the most sublime spectacle in Tierra de Fuego” by the British naturist Charles Darwin in the beginning of the XIX century.

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