Pythom News Feed
Canadian Marc-Andre Leclerc and Austrian Markus Pucher have been getting after it in Patagonia’s austral winter in recent days, on solo objectives on Torre Egger (2850m), and Cerro Torre (3100m) and Cerro Pollone (ca. 2600m), respectively.
On September 17, Leclerc reached the top of Torre Egger in a 21-hour push using a variation of the Winter Link-Up on the southeast face. According to Pataclimb.com, the Winter Link-Up was first climbed by Dani Arnold, Thomas Senf and Stefan Siegrist in August 2010 for the first winter ascent of the peak. Their three-day climb went up the Italian route and traversed into Titanic (6a A2 90 degrees 950m) at a snowfield halfway up. Leclerc’s variation took him up a gully of WI3 below enormous serac to the right of the east face, followed by a mixed pitch of M5 A1, and then a section of 5.10 to reach the base of the headwall. “This is the first and only time I have ever climbed below a serac,” he wrote on Patagonia Vertical. Continue read…
