Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25065
Attached to the vertical ice by only a few metal teeth, the ability to transform fear into adrenaline while negotiating volatile high-altitude terrain can draw the line between reaching the summit or plunging into emptiness. The Russian roulette of ice climbing frozen couloirs is a high-risk activity that tests human strength, precision and endurance. Argentina's remote Parc National los Glaciares of Patagonia is home of the largest icecap outside the earth's polar regions. It is an unforgiving mixed rock and blue glacial environment that provides one of the ultimate proving grounds for expedition ice climbing. The Fitz Roy region of the park, which includes the peaks of Cerro Torre (10,320 feet), Fitz Roy (11,170 feet) and Cerro Stanhardt (8,745 feet), is a collection of vertical granite needles that towers above a sprawling mass of glaciers and lures adventurous mountai neers. Few activities, and even fewer mountain ranges, test one's inner strength as viciously. This is not the kind of place you pay a guide service lots of cash to guarantee you will summit. It is renowned for its remoteness, its distance from all possibility of help. The nearest hel icopter is over 250 miles away and most rescue efforts occur amongst the climbers themselves. The ruthless bad weather, the ice sheets that plaster the rock and, above all, the terrible winds make climbing in this glacial arena complex, physically exhausting and emotionally taxi ng. And it is not a place many couples choose as a travel destination. Last October, the snow-covered peaks of Patagonia enticed, for a second year in a row, the elite French climbers Laurence Monnoyeur and Bruno Sourzac. Laurence is one of only seven women among 1,200 French mountain guides. Bruno is a professor at Ecole National de Ski et Alpinisme (ENSA), France's National Ski and Climbing School. ENSA guides are the people who train and educate the guides of Chamonix-some of the world's fi nest high altitude specialists. Laurence and Bruno returned to the remote Fitz Roy region to engage in a self-sufficient ice-climbing expedition, different from their previous mountaineering climbs in Europe. They intended to summit Cerro Tore. The ice-encased peak of Cerro Torre has been described by climbers as "a scream in stone" and a Unightmare aiguille [needle] emerging from a bubbling devil's cauldron of cloud, like a glittering lighthouse. n The polished vertical walls of Cerro Torre were, for decades, considered impossible to climb. In 1970 a bitter controversy in climbing history occurred when Italian alpinist Cesare Maestri and his party used a portable compressor drill to fix a line of bolts to reach the summit. But when planning their ascent, Laurence and Bruno like many of today's elite climbers-chose to not disfigure the rock on which they climbed. Cerro Torre's fi rst repeated alpi ne-style cl imb occurred in 1977 by Americans Jay Wilson, John Briggs and Dave Carmen. Their successful ascent put Cerro Torre on the map as one the great ascents of the ice world. French mountaineering legend Lionel Terray, the fi rst climber to ascend Maka lu in the Himalayas, pioneered the fi rst ever ascent of Fitz Roy in 1952. He confessed that this was the climb which brought him most nearly to his physical and moral limits. In the 52