Climbing Guillaumet Peak, Patagonia
Submitted by Carolina on March 6, 2010 – 8:54 amShare One Comment
The Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre cords in Patagonia are amazing places for climbers. In the summer, climbers from all over the world spend a few weeks or months trying to climb one of the routes on those granite peaks. When I was there, I had the chance to meet people from Australia, Austria, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Venezuela, Colombia, USA, Belgium and Perú. And I only stayed there about 10 days!, My plan was to climb Guillaumet peak.
Guillaumet peak is an smaller peak on the most eastern part of the Fitz Roy cord. The approach from ”Paso Superior” to the base of the peak, consist on a trekking on glacier. The day we did our attempt, we were so impressed to be so close to Fitz Roy peak. It was so beautiful that we kept walking for a couple of hundred meters towards the Fitz Roy instead of our route to Guillaumet. The orange-yellow-red sunlight in the granite was just amazing.
Once we arrived to the base of the route we planned to follow (Coluar Amy) we found a huge crevase in the base of the snow couluar. We had to chose another route: the Brennen ridge (TD 300m). In couluar Amy, our plan was to climb only 3 or 4 rock pitches, nothing harder than 6a. But Brennen ridge had 8 pitches, with a 6c in the fourth pitch. We were not mentally prepared for that, so right after finishing that hard pitch -that took us two hours!!-, we were so tired and stressed that decided to turn back.
As the mountaineer that my father is, when he saw the video of tears and laughs when we had to turn back, he told us that turning back it is the hardest decision that a mountaineer has to make, and he is so right. However thinking positively, the good thing is that in the very moment we were back in the base of the peak, we had that internal drive to try again sooner or later. Fortunately the mountains would always be there waiting for us to climb them.
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