Cerro Piergiorgio, La Ruta del Hertnano to summit ridge. In early 2007 we fixed 400m of rope up Piergiorgio’s 950m northwest face. We decided to use fixed ropes after hearing that a group of Germans climbers had tried the face with portaledges, only to have them shredded by the wind. On our last day of climbing we were forced down by a storm and had to leave the fixed ropes in place. Leaving the ropes motivated us to return to try again. We at least wanted to clean the ropes.

Early this year (2008) we returned to Chalten, and while we waited for Cristian Brenna and Mario Conti to arrive [Conti, a member of the 1974 Ragni di Lecco team that made the first ascent of Cerro Torre, was there as support, not part of the climbing team—Ed.], Giovanni Ongaro and Herve Barmasse reclimbed to our previous high point. Since many of the ropes were frayed, we had to reclimb the pitches. We did not have new fixed ropes, so we re-used the old ones, knotting over frayed sections. We fixed a further 60m from our high point, to a point at the base of a chimney, where during our first summit attempt Giovanni was hit by rockfall, hurting his hand, forcing him to retreat and return to Italy. On our second attempt the wind forced us to retreat, and finally our third attempt was successful.

We, Christian and Herve, set off from our tents at 2 a.m. on February 7, jugged our fixed ropes [460m], and reached the summit ridge at 2 a.m. the following day, descending back to our tents at 11 a.m. in a blizzard. While descending in the middle of a storm, we were unable to retrieve our fixed ropes.

Our route climbs an inobvious line that is exposed to rockfall, as Giovanni’s accident proves. In the first 600m the climbing is mostly aid, involving expanding flakes on dubious rock, with many blank sections that we overcame by drilling approximately 40 bat-hook holes. We climbed pitches on the second part of the route both aid and free. The majority of the belay stations have one bolt, while on the 29 pitches we placed six progression bolts. Our climbing style was not ideal, but not unlike the ascent of Cerro Murallon by Robert Jasper and Stefan Glowacz. [Glowacz and Jasper abandoned 500m of fixed rope on the wall—Ed.] We called our route “La Ruta del Hermano” and dedicated it to Agostino Rocca and his family, since they made this project possible. The route follows the 1995 Ragni di Lecco’s attempt, led by Casimiro Ferrari, up the center of the wall and then angling left to the summit ridge. Due to rockfall, not much is left of the Ragni attempt—only three pitches. It was impressive to find 15m blank sections below old belay stations, where rock and cracks climbed years before had simply caved off.

Compiled from e-mails from Christian Brenna and Herve Barmasse, Italy