Fitz Roy and other Patagonian Peaks. Our expedition was composed of Ricardo Czerniawski, César Fava, Guillermo Espoueys and me. We had hoped to climb the whole west face of Fitz Roy from the Cerro Torre valley, which would have been a new route to the Col de la Silla, where we would have joined the Californian route. On December 8 we set up Base Camp and on the 9th placed Camp I at the foot of the face. Not until December 20 and 21 could we make a first attempt with a bivouac, but we were driven back by high winds. We could see that our route was all exposed to avalanches from the hanging Silla Glacier. We gave up that attempt and felt justified when the whole couloir was swept away by an enormous avalanche on December 29. Leaving Base Camp on December 30 we climbed around to the east and reached the Silla from the other side, but winter conditions prevailed and we gave up.… The British expedition to Cerro Torre failed because of bad weather. The same was true of the Italian expedition, which attempted the 4000-foot eastern pillar which was tried several years ago by the French. Yesterday I met Armando Aste, Mariano Frizzera, Sergio Martini and Angelo Miorandi here in Buenos Aires, who told me that they had climbed about one-third of the pillar and had lost all their technical gear in a cave below the face after 20 days of continual snowstorm. A Buenos Aires expedition unsuccessfully attempted the Aguja Mermoz, north of and attached to Fitz Roy. After our attempt, an expedition from Tucumán tried our route but without success.

PETERSKVARCA, Centro Andino Buenos Aires