r/PatagoniaEurope

After spending more than twenty days as guests of the mountains there, the three women put up the first ascent of Mini Asgard with their new route La Casa de las Diosas (5.12?, C1, 220m) with perseverance, respect and humor. 

Watch the field report at: https://pat.ag/Baffin-Island_Reddit

"El Pilar Este runs on the left side of the imposing East Face of Cerro Chaltén, first climbed to the summit by Ragni Di Lecco in 1976. I climbed the first few pitches when I freed a variation of El Corazón with Nico Favresse in 2009 and I always wondered if the whole line would go free. In 2015, Matteo Della Bordella and others took down the gear left behind by the FA team during the second ascent, leaving the route in better condition for repeaters. Fair play to them for all that work!

My friend Tasio and I started climbing early on March 6 and the ice axe quickly became our most important tool. We would clean ice out of the crack to make space for a hand jam, hang the axe over the shoulder, jam in the hand, grab the axe with the other hand and hack away at the ice in the next section. Needless to say progress was slow, but we kept going just to see how far we could go.

Probably the best pitch was a difficult, laser-cut seam cutting diagonally across a blank face, with thin finger locks for handholds and crystals for feet. I fell after a good onsight fight and thought there was very little chance of redpointing, but I decided to give it a lash. To my surprise I sent the pitch cleanly!

Tasio was the best partner I could have wished for, always positive and up for anything. At one point I broke off a foothold just as he looked up and he received a rock straight to his face. "Don’t worry, keep climbing,” he said, as blood gushed from the cut on his nose. He taped it up and that was the end of that.

Despite an especially wintry two days, we freed every pitch and reached the summit on March 8. We celebrated with some Basque cheese, a little tune on the tin whistle and then started the rappels down Franco Argentina with very low visibility and strong winds.

It was a great and memorable adventure, and to have shared it with Tasio makes it all the more special!

Content: Tasio Martin