Gian Luca Cavalli, Manrico Dell’Agnola, and I spent January 2020 on the Peninsula in largely poor weather. We traveled aboard Icebird, captained by Oliver Grant.

 On January 10, we climbed a steep mixed route to a subpeak (unofficially dubbed Cima Cocoon) of Zeiss Needle (696m), on the northwest Arctowski Peninsula. (The subpeak is approximately 64°40.251'S, 62°34.823'W.) The 600m route, Via della Seta, ascended the rocky southwest face and, unusually for a climb on the Peninsula, climbed M4 terrain as well as more moderate snow and ice to AI4. We descended via a combination of downclimbing and rappelling. The rock was of typically poor quality and hard to protect, but the unusually warm temperatures of this season also resulted in bad snow and ice conditions, which we found as we visited all the popular climbing and ski areas of the region. [Zeiss Needle itself was climbed and skied by an American team in February 2000.]

After exploring possibilities around the Wall Range on Wiencke Island in poor weather, we sailed to Anvers Island and into Börgen Bay. There, we noticed a beautiful ice/mixed line on the south side of the end of Gateway Ridge, a southern extension of Mt. Rennie (1,555m). On January 16, in improved weather, we were dropped off at a weak point in the seracs some hundreds of meters east of this wall (64°43'48.80"S, 63°30'45.97"W). A circuitous and difficult route led in four hours to the bergschrund. After steep snow, ice, and mixed pitches heading right, we reached a second bergschrund and then climbed multiple steep pitches—one vertical pitch with sections of 95°, and others at 60–85°, all with generally good ice screw protection. Before the top, we negotiated almost vertical pitches with mushrooms and cornices, reminiscent of Peru and Patagonia, which were poorly protected with deadmen and stakes. We reached the top 12 hours after drop-off to complete the 700m Terzo Paradiso (AI5 M5).

Due to the poor ice conditions, we decided to descend the back of the ridge rather than rappel the route, traversing the Hooper Glacier and eventually rappelling a serac to the shore, a long way west of our drop-off point, where Icebird’s Zodiac retrieved us (64°44'03.67"S, 63°33'15.94"W).

During the expedition we conducted snow sampling as part of a research project in collaboration between myself from the DIBRIS Department of Genova University and the Institute of Polar Sciences of the Italian National Research Council.

– Marcello Sanguineti, CAAI, Italy