Poincenot, Banana Wall. After studying the region in hopes of opening a new route, we found a picture in the AAJ showing this magnificent north face with no line up the fractured center, between Old Smugglers (800m, 5.10+ A1/2, Crouch-Donini 1996) and the Potter-Davis (550m, 5.11 Cl, 2001) lines. This was the start of our adventure, which brought us to climb those wonderful granite cracks.

After getting useful information in El Chalten, thanks to Carsten von Birckhahn, who showed us nice photos of the face and gave beta on the approach, Sacha Friedlin and I started on January 11, 2008, for a one-push attempt. After a 17-hour roundtrip in Canadian winter weather that slowed us, we climbed only four pitches of mixed climbing up the face after the long, snowy approach.

Five days later, on January 16, the forecast announced good weather coming the 18th. We didn’t wait and started from Chalten at 7 p.m., slept at Agostini camp 10km farther, and started at 10 the next morning for the remaining four hours of approach. Under bad weather at 11 p.m., above the couloir between Aguja Kakito and Poincenot, we spent three hours chopping an ice ledge. The next day, after unsuccessfully trying to sleep through heavy spindrift, we climbed slowly up icy cracks to reach a good bivy site at the end of pitch 6, having fixed our two 60m ropes above. Perfect weather on the 19th allowed us to finish the wall (taking our ropes with us), continuing to summit, and then descending the Whillans-Cochrane route on the other side, in a 24-hour push.

We placed no bolts or pitons, so the route (800m, VI 5.11a M6+ C1) is free of gear, even at belays. It is very sustained, as nearly every pitch is in the 5.10 range, with a few cruxes of 5.11a. We French-freed in a few spots due to icy cracks—these sections would go free in warmer weather—and encountered mixed climbing on the first three pitches in the Aguja Kakito couloir and again on pitch 6. The M6+ mixed crux (pitch 3) involved unconsolidated vertical snow below overhanging rock passages, but could be avoided by climbing a one-rope-length direct line between pitch 2 and pitch 4, avoiding the unfriendly first bivy site. With that variation the next party would have to do mixed climbing only up to M4.

We named the route Banana Wall because of the curving geometry of its high-quality granite cracks that graced almost every pitch.

Frédéric Maltais, Québec, Canada