Exploration of Patagonian Continental Icecap and Ascent of Aguja del Río Túnel. Our expedition was composed of Jenny Morelos, Monica Stalsché, Ismael Palma, Alfredo Fragueiro, Néstor Apráiz, Fernando Bosch and me as leader. The undertaking was definitely divided into two phases. The first was exploratory and the second mountaineering. Our exploration had as its objective the penetration of the Continental Icecap following the 49° 20' south latitude parallel and crossing the routes of Kölliker (1916) and Shipton (1963) to reach the totally unvisited southern part of the Mariano Moreno chain. A truck left us at the hanging bridge of the Río de las Vueltas. A long day’s march took us to our Base Camp on the left of the Río Túnel, which drains the Grande and Quervain glaciers, which descend from Cerro Grande. Another long day up glacier and moraine took us to the Paso del Viento, which separates the Grande basin from the icecap. With 65-pound loads, on January 13 Palma, Apráiz, Fragueiro, Bosch and I descended steeply a short distance and entered the icecap. We advanced against wind and in falling snow some twelve miles through crevasses to camp near what the French glaciologist Lliboutry called the “Volcán” Viedma (in reality not a volcano but a nunatak with primitive vegetation). After holing up for two days in stormy weather, we ran two more camps forward and reached the foot of the Mariano Moreno massif, where we were buried by a two-day snowfall of six feet. The final day of the return, January 22, was an exhausting 20 miles from the “volcano” to Base Camp; that day we found the Swiss explorer Kölliker’s Camp IV, which he had used exactly 50 years before. Moreno Sur will be one of the hardest Patagonian peaks to climb, both because of its location and its own extreme difficulties.

After our exploration, all expedition members except for Palma and me had to return to Buenos Aires. We understood immediately that to climb the highest Aguja del Río Túnel we could not lay siege to the mountain but must make a lightning attack, a style I really prefer. On the 24th we left Base Camp, crossed the Paso del Viento, headed for the needles and bivouacked at the foot of the highest one. The chain of the Agujas (needles) del Río Túnel is made up of three peaks, each about 7875 feet. They join the Cerro Grande massif at nearly right angles and as they extend to the west, receive the cold, moist winds and are plastered with ice mushrooms. From the bivouac a glacier of some 3000 feet separated us from the final wall, which rose 2000 feet to the summit. The rock was very rotten and held pitons badly. At first we had rock alternating with rather hard and exposed ice patches and then steep, friable rock. Then as we ascended, the influence of the wind made itself felt, plastering the rock first with bits of rime and then a deep cover of it. Difficulty varied from IV to V sup. with an occasional VI. Especially annoying was the lack of decent hold for pitons. About 500 feet below the summit the ice began to cover even the steepest slopes and was extremely hard. Ice axes and crampons were naturally essential as well as ice pitons. The very summit was cloud-capped. This point was a huge mushroom which presented access only on the east. We stayed little time on top. After some ten rappels, the ice chunks bombarding us from above were so dangerous that we traversed left to an ice slope that we descended for 500 feet back to the foot of the climb. We reached our bivouac at dusk and returned to Base the following day. (An attempt to climb Cerro Rincón, which lies four miles south of Marconi’s highest summit and four miles west of FitzRoy, failed when Comesaña fell into a crevasse and emerged with broken ribs after a difficult struggle of four hours. — Editor.)

Carlos Comesaña, Centro Andino Buenos Aires