Nacimiento, New Route, Previously Unreported. Between December, 1999, and March, 2000, I returned to the Bonete-Pissis area in the southern Puna de Atacama, south of the well-known Ojos del Salado. On December 23, W. Zieglmeier, M. Betzl, and I climbed a mountain normally known as Casadero (6658m, 27° 12' S, 68° 33.5' W), but it seems that most of the Argentinian climbers call it Walter Penck, even though W. Penck, a German geologist and geographer who worked in Argentina from 1912 to 1914, had never been on the summit. So this peak has two names.

One day later, we reached the two northern (highest) summits of Nacimiento (6490m, 27° 16.5' S, 68° 31' W). Both mountains haven’t been climbed more than five or six times before. Probably we were the first to reach these mountains from the south, from the Laguna Azul. We didn’t use mules, but with a four-wheel-drive vehicle we were able to drive up to 5000 meters!

Alexander von Götz, Germany