Compressed!

By Steve Long

With both feet planted firmly on Cesare Maestri's infamous compressor, high on the final headwall of Cerro Torre, I gazed down with satisfaction. Neil and lain were rapidly approaching this unique belay as evening sun bathed the Fitzroy massif. Immediately behind us, our Slovenian friend Tanja was completing the first female ascent with her partner, Monika.

Neil grinned. ''We're unstoppable now!'' Carefully seating the rope away from the sharp seam of the rusted petrol tank, he inched towards the platform. That was when his knee touched the icicle. With a sickening crack, an icy brieze block launched itself into space. A perfect score! The block destroyed Iain's helmet and veered off towards Monika. A second of silence. Iain hung unconscious until Monika’s screams began to slice the air.

Weeks of howling gales that tatter tents and probe the cracks in the ramshackle shanty huts of Rio Blanco and Camp Bridwell, that smear gobs of gleaming new snow onto the vicious granite spikes that stab the Patagonian icecap, that line every new lenscap cloud; they ended on the

afternoon that our bus limped into the backpacker's mecca of El Chalten. After nearly two months of storms, assorted super-alpinists were hastily packing their bags ready to race up to their gear caches and onto the mountains.

It’s only a stroll to Camp Bridwell but for a couple of hundred pesos you can help the local economy by hiring a gaucho to packhorse the equipment in to base camp. We did the decent thing. Ambling up through aromatic pine woods and heaths and basking in a light breeze, we couldn’t believe our luck: Neil had survived a month of gales and storms on his previous visit and had held court for many nights at the Vaynol Arms recounting his experiences. Iain and I had agreed that just getting a photograph of Cerro Torre would represent success, but an hour into the approach and we were drowning in photos and digital images. Now it looked like we would have to try and climb the thing after all.

Camp Bridwell is a sturdy shed of pine and plastic in a stunted woodland fringe, surrounded by a gaggle of tents. Climbers’ and trekkers’ paths part just beyond the Rio Fitzroy that flows out from a glacial