Alex Honnold and Colin Haley Go On Patagonian Climbing Rampage
It’s not just Yosemite that has Alex Honnold firmly in its grips. For the past few years, the Patagonian Ice Cap has drawn the famous pro climber to its pointy summits, and this year was no different as Honnold teamed up with his friend Colin Haley to go on another alpine rampage, Climbing Magazine reports. The area surrounding the hamlet of El Chaltén draws some of the most adventurous climbers in the world even though it’s also home to some of the worst weather anywhere on the planet. It seems that the climbing is good enough to warrant waiting around for weeks on end.
In 2016, Honnold and Haley made history by completing the second ascent of the Torre Traverse (ascending and descending four of the biggest peaks in the area) in 20 hours and 40 minutes. If you go fast enough, bad weather doesn’t seem to pose much of a problem eh?
This year, the dream team ticked off a few more massive objectives. First on the list was a traverse of the Fitz Roy Massif better known as the Care Bear Traverse, summiting Aguja Guillaumet, Aguja Mermoz, Aguja Val Biois, and Cerro Fitz Roy. Unfortunately, bad conditions prevented them from climbing the final summit of Fitz Roy, but they still managed to bag three major summits in a day. After this attempt, the two set out again for the first traverse of what they called the Crystal Castles Traverse, a linkup of Cerro Pollone, Cerro Piergiorgio, and Domo Blanco. Like most peaks in Patagonia, the true summits of all of these are covered in rime ice, making it much more difficult to climb than the rest of the route, which tends to be mostly dry rock.
Join Our Newsletter
On top of the traverses, Honnold and Haley completed multiple free solos, including the likely first ascent of Cerro Electrico Oeste, and Honnold’s repeat of the classic 5.10d route Thaw’s Not Houlding Wright, which he finished in a storm. On his Instagram post, Honnold shared “I wound up climbing very icy cracks in a very windy snow storm and made it to the top. Thankfully the descent was a lot more sheltered and I downclimbed the historic East face down to the glacier and then back to the normal hiking trails. It wound up being a little under 12 hours house to house, which is a pretty awesome way to climb mountains. Something like 7.5k ft of vertical and 24mi of hiking/jogging in and out. What a day!”
