Tasting the Paine: Solo New Route on Cerro Escudo

March 2008

Spitzer Award recipient Dave Turner reports on his amazing, 34-day solo new route in Patagonia.

I arrived in Patagonia on November 15, after dragging five haulbags down from my home in Sacramento, California. An adventure and challenge in itself! I was robbed in Buenos Aires, which led to a dramatic fistfight in the terminal, but I eventually made it to Puerto Natales with all of the gear. I was bringing down the full big-wall rack and alpine kit, a few hundred pounds and about $70,000 worth of the best gear available. All of my gear was brand-new, and I came up with some good modifications to my systems to guard against the unbelievable strength of the storms down there.

The approach to Cerro Escudo is 12 miles from the road’s end, and I made this 11 times before starting the climb, for a round-trip total of 264 miles of load carrying. Luckily I had a 60GB iPod with two solar chargers to help crank out the miles. It seemed like an endless task just to get to the foot of this mega wall with all of my gear and supplies.

My climbing plan was pretty simple, or so it seemed! I showed up with two 70-meter lead lines and one double-length static haul line, and I wanted to climb the wall in a continuous effort, as close to alpine-style as possible. One person, one wall, with only the summit as an acceptable outcome. Nothing was going to stop this dream from coming to fruition except for what we put in the back of our mind and don’t talk about. Being alone on such a wall, with no chance of rescue, every move had to be assessed and executed as if I were just doing another hard route on El Capitan with the handy rescue helicopter at the ready. Of course it wasn’t, but I needed to be willing to go for it nonetheless.

The east face of Cerro Escudo already had one route on it, to the right side, put up by three Americans, Brad Jarret, Chris Breemer, and Christian Santilices, in 1995. They made it to the top of the wall, but not the summit. But don’t let this fact throw you off. They were bad-ass for going for this wall, and much respect from me is focused their way. I believe it took this very talented team of three something like 23 days to climb to the summit ridge. A few other minor attempts have been logged on this wall, but nothing close to making a route.

I believe Jim Beyer’s solo of the west face of Mt. Thor on Baffin Island is the closest anyone has come to soloing a Grade VII wall by a new route. But he scrambled off the big ledge that splits the middle of the wall, leaving all of his stuff up there, and returned the next year, traversing back and finishing. Again, this gets so much respect from me, as I know Jim and it showed me that it could be done.

After fixing the first 130-meter slab, with not so bad difficulties to 5.6R A3, I started to haul the bags and prepared to blast. While some bags up one at a time from the ground, the sun came out on the upper wall full-strength (rare!), and all hell started to break loose from the summit. Ice, rock, and snow was ripping all past me, so I went down to the pile of my bags at the base, unharnessed, and went to camp five minutes away for lunch to let the wall cool down before returning. When I came back a few hours later, I had a nice surprise: A basketball-size rock had smashed right onto my harness at the base. My aiders, daisies, Mini Traxion, some ’biners, and a locker were absolutely destroyed. And worse, the harness had its swami belt cut through about 50 percent and had lost two gear loops, and another was threatening to fall off. I had some extra aiders and daisies, and sewed some new gear loops on. But the Yates harnesses are so strong to start with, I just went with the cut-up one for the whole climb. I did not have the extra money to replace it, and it is just about impossible to do so down there anyway.

Eventually, after a few big storms rolled through, I was able to blast on December 23. I was knowingly going to be spending Christmas, New Year’s, and my birthday up there. One pitch above the large ledge, I made my first of many portaledge camps, tying the ledge to many pitons and tensioned hooks to hold it down. The updrafts on the wall were almost funny, as they would lift even the haulbags, and I tied these down too!

So, I guess I should touch on the hardware before I continue. This first bivy anchor, as with half of all the other belays on the route, was entirely natural. I absolutely kept the drilling to a minimum on this climb for many reasons. And when I did drill belays, it was two shorty, hangerless ¼-inchers. Old-school style and sketchy, but they were quick to drill and lighter. I highly recommend to a second-ascent team (or soloist) to take a bunch of real bolts up there and strengthen it up. But keep the natural belays just that.

As for the pitches, they averaged 65 to 70 meters each, usually with between zero and six holes per lead. Two pitches had 10 holes. Not much when you think about how long, difficult, and overhanging the climb was. I am not going to explain the details of the climb pitch by pitch, but I will say this. I have climbed a fair amount of routes over the years, and hands down this is the hardest route I have touched. Besides the difficulty, this is the best route I have climbed, ever. Pitch after pitch of sustained thin, overhanging cracks, on excellent rock, and in a stunning location. And believe me, there are a few sections where you will take some long whips. Yes, I took a few of these. And yes again, they hurt. But luckily I avoided all serious injuries, although I did have a few close calls.

The crux of the route came at about one-third height. A few solid pins off the belay (with a small ledge to hit, of course) led into about 12 to 14 beaks; not the longest stretch of beaks on the climb, but I ripped many out while testing them, and all but two I cleaned with my fingers! A few falls were logged when things went wrong, and some blood was lost, but nothing so bad that I would have to deal with it in a desperate way.

At my second camp on the wall I sat through an enormous storm, just pounding. Two and a half days of continuous wind and snow left my 80-centimeter-wide belay ledge (the only ledge of size on the route) with three meters of snow on it. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t been there! The ropes were trapped in three inches of ice. At this point it was only about the eighth day of 34 I’d spend on the wall. The pattern of bad weather continued more or less for the first three weeks, which was the first half of the route. The second half fell in only two more weeks, as I received better weather, even though the climbing was steeper and more sustained.

The steepness of the route was quite impressive to me, and it gave me a false sense of security. I thought that everything that fell, or most of it, would fall out from me. Lots of the time this was the case, but not always. I would hear a rock or chunk of ice coming, stop what I was doing, and watch it head for me. I would stay quite still and calm, loosen my daisy chain, and then shift to the left or right in my aiders to let it go past. Jokingly I referred to this as “dancing”! But my portaledge didn’t dance, and it took many hits. The worst was when a fist-sized rock went through my customized double-wall, triple-pole rain-fly system, through my puffy jacket as well, and came to a rest in the pile of sleeping bags inside. Luckily I was outside, climbing the pitch above the ledge, because the block landed where my head is when I sleep. More repair work ensued, a constant job task on a wall as pissed-off as this one.

Eventually, I started to get closer to the top, with stacked pitches of A3+ to A4+ lined up beneath me. After one last hard aid pitch, two easier pitches up a right-trending ramp would gain the ridge. The virgin ridge. I had no idea what to expect up there, as you can’t see it from anywhere. But I knew one thing: It was shit rock up there. It changes from bomber granite to a nasty, shattered black shale.

On Day 33 I decided to push up the last aid pitch to the ramp. I had prepared an alpine pack with tech tools, crampons, puffy pants and jacket, bivy sack, goggles, gaiters, food and water, and all of the other alpine goodies. I didn’t take the pack with me on that day, as I was planning only to fix my rope up to the ramp and go for it the next day. But I made the ramp by 11 a.m., and then decided to go up and have a look at the ridge. The two pitches up the ramp went quickly enough, but from the top I couldn’t see the upper ridge, as a tower was in the way. So I climbed out of the notch, the hardest part of the ridge, and was up on the summit ridge proper by 1 p.m.

I had nothing with me. No food or water, pack, or anything. Just a headlamp and my lead gear. A quick smile broke out on my face, and I just went for it. The weather was warm and clear, but a bit windy. I tagged the top, and then went back into the notch below the summit for pics and to suck the water from a trickle in the back of a crack. Within a few minutes I wassoloing back the way I came, and then rapping back to the portaledge on the wall proper, making it back by 10 or 11 p.m.

My dream had come true. No, I made it come true. I am not even going to try to relate how I felt actually doing what I had dreamt of for so long, but I am sure you have an idea. The next day saw one of my proudest pushes ever, rapping the whole wall in 18 hours in desperately windy conditions. I had my three cords, and just before I left the ground some Americans had donated a fourth, 60-meter rope to me; this was not so useful on the way up, as most of the pitches were 70 meters, but it came in handy on the way down.

The descent went like this: I would tie all of my ropes together, ends to ends. Then I would rap, down-swing, and aid, connecting as many belays as the length of my ropes would allow. Then I would jug back up, and then bring down all of the bags at once, with a special rappel-braking system I came up with. Then I would go back up the ropes again, and then pull them one by one as I made my way back down again. I repeated this process until I was on the last rappel to the ground, jugging the length of El Cap one and a half times that day.

All of my ropes were completely screwed up by this point. Core shots like you wouldn’t believe. And on the second rap I’d lost some of my only good rope, having to cut it loose from behind a flake. As the last rope on the last rappel was being abused for the last time, it broke. I heard a sick crack, and I then I dropped. After six feet of terror, the belay device stopped me. I looked up to see two meters of exposed core. Then I smelled the overheated rappel device burning through the core strands one by one. I desperately looked for my knife to cut loose my load, but I couldn’t locate it fast enough on the back of my harness because of all the shit there. So I just let the ATC strip its way down the core, bunching the sheath under it as it went. Eventually the heat had dissipated, and the core wasn’t burning any more. But none of the bunched-up sheath would pass through the device, so I cut off my belay loop and continued down as fast as I could on just the Grigri attached to my tie-in points, thinking light thoughts with the ridicously heavy load on my system.

I made the ground a few minutes later and let out a big monkey call when my boots made contact with the glacier. Oh my god, I did it, and lived through it! Unfortunately, I had to leave this rope on the route, along with all of the booty of the belay and a new Dragonfly stove sitting next to the belay. I have been beating myself up since about this, as I really despise leaving this junk rope on the mountain. It is not on the line of ascent, and I couldn’t climb back up to it. I hope the winter storms sweep it off the slab, and I owe you some beers if you repeat the route and can remove it.

A big thanks goes out to the American Alpine Club for their help on this climb through a Lyman Spitzer Cutting-Edge Award, and to Black Diamond, Patagonia, BlueWater, Yates, and Cascade Designs/MSR for their help to make this fantasy of mine into reality.

Summary: Taste the Paine (VII 5.9 A4+), a solo new route on the east face of Cerro Escudo in the Paine region of Patagonia. Dave Turner made a continuous ascent and descent of this 1,200-meter big wall, plus 300 vertical meters of ridge climbing, over 34 days in December 2007 and January 2008.

Dave Turner’s new route on the east face of Cerro Escudo will be featured in the 2008 American Alpine Journal.

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