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A short history of Cerro Torre, the most controversial mountain (2012)
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- rcpt 4mo agoThose two guys removed an established easement. Sure one can argue that it should never have been installed in the first place, but it was and apparently it became widely used. They had no business taking it down.
- kakacik 4mo agoIndeed, they were visitors and were given no permission to alter mountains in such ways. If it should have been done, it should have been done by owners of that terrain - I presume Chile / Argentine. The arrogance of this... I see no difference between Maestri's act and their. Arrogance of fanatics who think they stand above others, their cause is righteous and so on. I love mountains, I love climbing to the death, but there is nothing respectable in these actions. Also, if they could climb it without using bolts, it was hardly 'forever erased for future' even though I get that route was probably permanently altered. In same/similar way that tens of thousands of other routes have been altered in similar way by placing permanent stuff in the wall - in all of European Alps, Yosemite, Himalayas and so on. I do find various old to very old equipment in main routes or just climbing crags all over French and Swiss alps for example. At that point its part of mountaineering history. Sometimes, even a specific famous name is assigned to given piece by those who know its story.
- _vertigo 4mo agoRock climbing ethics is more complicated and dramatic than that. Applying this logic about easements doesn’t really capture the whole picture, because you’re considering people only, not considering the mountain. I think some people who support chopping those bolts would argue that this is like restoring the Mona Lisa after some random guy painted their own painting over it. Yes, removing that guy’s crappy painting is technically a destructive act and removes the world’s ability to see that painting. But net-net, things have improved, even though there will always be some signs of the damage done by a fool.
- riffraff 4mo agoI think the point is they had no authority to do that. Michaelangelo's Last Judgment had exposed genitals that were covered with draperies by Daniele da Volterra later. Then at some point they were removed again to restore the original, but some remain. It would not be reasonable for _me_ to step up and erase the remaining ones, even if it would be a restoration.
- bluebarbet 4mo agoTo which the obvious rejoinder is that Maestri had no authority to put them there in the first place.
- margalabargala 4mo agoTo which the obvious rejoinder is that two wrongs do not make a right. At the end of the day, it's sort of a "might makes right" situation. If someone with the means and inclination to add bolts exists, it is hard to stop them. If someone with the means and inclination to remove bolts exists, it is hard to stop them. At the end of the day, climb your own climb. If you take actions that affect how others climb, what you're calling ethics is in fact ego.
- bluebarbet 4mo ago>what you're calling ethics I wasn't calling anything anything. I was just putting the obvious counter-argument on the table. You make a fair point.
- margalabargala 4mo agoSorry, the "you" there (and really my whole last paragraph) is addressed at the climbers with strong opinions about how other people climb, not you personally.
- butlike 4mo agoThe bottom line is the mountain didn't have bolts from the get-go. You're still free to climb it, and if you can't; you won't.
- butlike 4mo agoMountain didn't come with the easements at first and it was still possible to summit. It should be possible to do it without them again. The bottom line is anything else besides that is lazy. As the article says, there's many alternate mountains for more inexperienced climbers.
- matheusmoreira 4mo ago> police arrested them and confiscated 102 bolts That stood out to me... I understand that rock climbing is Serious Business to its practitioners and people on internet forums, but these two guys actually got arrested for removing those bolts, which is a whole new level of serious. Was it really some kind of crime to do that? What happened to those guys after that?
- Yossarrian22 4mo agoI can't find many details, but I had heard Hayden's name before, he sadly died of suicide after losing his partner in an avalanche ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayden_Kennedy_(climber) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayden_Kennedy_(climber) ). Jason Kruk appears to still be climbing to this day, so neither appeared to wind up in significant legal trouble after rightly or wrongly damaging a tourist destination.
- snowwrestler 4mo agoI think you’ll be sad if you look up Hayden Kennedy. No serious legal consequences to them from this climb, though, and the route remains clean. There was a wonderful film in this year’s Mountains On Stage film tour called Patagonian Chimeras, about a team of women who climbed the new variation by fair means.
- rurban 4mo agoThe route is not clean, the Red Bull film team added more bolts, when Lama did his climb there in 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/201 https://web.archive.org/web/201 90530021810/http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web10x/newswire-lama-speaks-compressor http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web10x/newswire-lama-speaks-comp... This couldn't happen in my climbing area, the Saechsische Schweiz, famous for creating the first Climbing regulations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxon_Switzerland_climbing_region#Regulations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxon_Switzerland_climbing_reg... Police will arrest you for putting bolts in there for sure.
- liversage 4mo agoI've heard a variation of the story where the police took them away (i.e., "arrested" them) to protect them from what was becoming an angry mob.
- chabes 4mo agoThe mountain should have never been bolted in the first place. The debate that it is an established route and thus should be left up comes from a place of entitlement. If you can’t climb the mountain, what are you even doing there? There are plenty of mountains in the area that can be climbed instead. Same can be said about the Dawn Wall of El Cap. Harding should have never bolted it. Removing his bolt ladder was the ethical move by Robbins.
- ofrzeta 4mo agoWhat kind of ethics is it to decide that these walls must be free climbed? If you want to do that, fine, go ahead and ignore the bolts.
- dwd 4mo agoThere is the "Leave No Trace" principle where you do not leave anything behind. This is why you see in trad climbing the lead will place cams and nuts, while the last in the group on that pitch retrieves them.
- ofrzeta 4mo agoSure there's this principle but this just moves the need for justification. Humans leave their traces everywhere so why this principle for mountains? There are many traces that should be removed such as hydroelectric power stations, river straightening and so on. Is this whataboutism? I just think a few bolts in a mountain don't do much harm and as a casual observer of these mountains you won't even notice. Also I am very much for "leaving no traces" in the sense that everyone picks up their trash.
- chabes 4mo ago> Humans leave their traces everywhere so why this principle for mountains? It’s called conservation. It is why we have these places to climb in the first place. These are protected wild places.
- jandrewrogers 4mo agoOne of the things I appreciate about the Andes Mountains is that in this age of social media ruining everything most areas are still pretty wild. You don’t see long queues of people waiting to take selfies. You may not see other people at all. They are second in height to the Himalaya but in most other ways are more interesting. I feel like the governments there low-key try to keep it that way.
- casumel 4mo agoI did Cerro El Plomo in January and it was a very blissful experience. Barely any people and no phones. Can highly recommend.
- TFNA 4mo agoThe industry that has sway over the Andes is mining. Against that, tourism income is negligible and in fact more tourism could threaten the mining industry.
- AlotOfReading 4mo agoThe higher Himalayas are largely unpeopled as well, especially above 4000m. The only time I met people above those altitudes were at night in camps/settlements. I'm sure the EBC route is more crowded, but that's one very small trek in an enormous mountain range.
- samastur 4mo agoThat's because there so much of them and most of the range is not very comfortably accessible (you usually need to endure some discomfort either getting there or staying nearby). Where you can get nearby fairly easy like base Las Torres, you'll have plenty of people doing just that. I don't think this is by intent. It's just that the countries themselves are relatively poor and have higher priority projects for their limited resources.
- hvb2 4mo ago> Where you can get nearby fairly easy like base Las Torres, you'll have plenty of people doing just that. Are you sure it's the accessibility or the fact that Torres del Paine, which is very famous, is next door? I get what you're saying though, maybe you just picked a bad example
- htatche 4mo agoAlex Honnold has a series about it on his podcast I'd recommend listening to. (The Greatest Lie)
- anthk 4mo agoCerro Torre means "tower hill". Appropiate.
- aaronrobinson 4mo agoNice read. Very interesting.
- rob74 4mo agoMy first reaction to the title was "how can a mountain be controversial?!", and, even after reading the article, the title still sounds wrong to me. I mean, a mountain is a mountain, it just... exists in a very undisputable way. What climbers did or didn't do on that mountain can be controversial, but not the mountain itself.
- decimalenough 4mo agoYeah, I thought this would be about a border dispute or something.
- mellosouls 4mo agoOfc we all know this but its nice to be reminded that gatekeeping and nerdery is not limited to tech forums.
- alberto-m 4mo agoMountaneering nerdery is in some sense nobler, since people practising it put their health and lives at stake. Debates about C++ undefined behaviour would get a different flavour if every now and then some high-profile developer were killed by nasal demons.
- butlike 4mo agoif (undefined) { launchNuclearCache(); }
- joshcramer 4mo agoIf you like this story, I highly recommend “The Tower”, a book on this topic by Kelly Cordes. This book, although history, reads like an outdoor adventure mystery thriller. Check out Kelly’s intro on his blog, where he also shares his famous Marg recipe: https://kellycordes.com/2014/11/26/my-cerro-torre-book-and-marg-recipe/ https://kellycordes.com/2014/11/26/my-cerro-torre-book-and-m.... I can personally attest, that Kelly makes the best Margs.
- liversage 4mo agoMaestri's claimed first ascent and his compressor route made the history of Cerro Torre controversial, and the later removal of the bolts added to this controversy. However, the unfortunately now deceased climbing prodigy David Lama also had his own scandal on the compressor route while sponsored by Red Bull. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lama#Cerro_Torre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lama#Cerro_Torre
- butlike 4mo agoIt reads like the scandal was only from the first attempt at the free climb, where a bunch of belays and bolts were left behind. He since went back and on attempt 3 was able to free climb the compressor side completely. This was after they removed the 120 bolts.
- NoboruWataya 4mo agoCurious to know the basis on which they were arrested. I guess it's something in the realm of criminal damage to public property. But that would imply that Maestri's bolts had become part of the public property that is the mountain. I assume Maestri was not arrested for inserting the bolts. Not being a mountain climber at all I don't really have an opinion on this, but I do naturally sympathise with the anti-bolt guys because I am fond of the idea of leaving no trace.
- cjonas 4mo agoThey didn't remove the bolts for "leave no trace" reasons. They removed them because the style they were put up was considered "poor climbing ethics". They felt it could go "free" and on gear. This would have made the summit unobtainable to all but the strongest climbers in the world... Which would have upset many people who had traveled far and spent a lot of money to attempt the summit. Alex Honnolds "climbing gold" podcast has like a 3 part series on this history if your interested to learn more.
- kodt 4mo agoI think the question here is: what is the specific criminal charge or law that was broken to be arrested?
- dfxm12 4mo agoYou don't have to be charged with anything to be arrested. Kennedy's wikipedia page suggests they were released from jail, implying LEO decided they actually committed no crime (and certainly weren't charged). If you're really curious, maybe the jurisdiction has public arrest records, but this assumes that the cops were doing everything by the book, which is not always an apt assumption. My guess is that towns and leo get, let's say, passionate, when a big tourism draw gets defaced, or when something can get more dangerous, but cooler heads eventually prevailed.
- butlike 4mo agoJust goes to show you money can't buy everything. Can't buy you being in good enough shape to climb the mountain at the mountain's level.