Sean Villanueva O’Driscoll of Belgium and Tasio Martin of Spain have just made the first free climb of the East Pillar of Fitz Roy.
The pair spent three days on the 1,200m route. They not only freed every pitch but almost made it in a single onsight push!
Martin explained they onsighted pitch after pitch until they fell. Then they rappelled down and started again, completing the line on their second attempt.
Conditions on the wall were far from ideal. A recent storm had covered some sections in ice, which the climber had to chop away with an ice axe, Diario Cronica reported. They spent the first night on the 17th pitch, passed the crux 22nd pitch with a traverse to the left following a crack, and stopped for the second night on pitch 31.
On the final day of climbing, conditions worsened. The pair had to climb the last pitches in mixed conditions, in stormy weather and low visibility. This also increased the hazards during their descent via the French route.
Motivation contagious
“We still can’t believe it,” Tasio Martin wrote on social media. He had long planned to climb that line, but free climbing it was beyond his wildest dreams. However, he explained that Villanueva O’Driscoll was all in to free climb every pitch, and “his motivation was contagious.”
For Villanueva, free climbing the East Pillar was also a long-time project. He freed the lower quarter with Nico Favresse in 2011. On that occasion, the two Belgians eventually traversed to the nearby El Corazon route and followed it to the summit in an impressive, onsight, free climb.
The climb took place a week ago, but as usual in Patagonia, the climbers have only just shared the news.
Sean Villanueva O’Driscoll at the Banff Mountain Festival, Canada. Photo: Jerry Kobalenko
Rarely attempted
The East Pillar of Fitz Roy, also known as the Italian or Ragni route, is rarely attempted. Casimiro Ferrari and Vittorio Meles of the famous Ragni di Lecco club first climbed it in 1976. They used a large amount of gear, including cable ladders that they left on the mountain.
Remarkably, it took 40 years for a second team, fellow Italians Matteo Della Bordella and David Bacci, to complete the first repetition. One year earlier, Della Bordella had spent time cleaning old gear from the route, together with Luca Schiera and Sylvan Schupbach. Read more here.
Below, a video of an attempted climb last year by Russians Ratmir Mukhametzyanov, Maksim Ten, Leonid Krupa, and Grigoriy Chshukin.
