Torre Fino

Torre Fino (south west ridge)
Our new year resolution is to climb more, so here we go, we decide to climb/ scramble the south west ridge of the Torre Fino, just outside of Bariloche.
Our guide opened this route because he used to climb in the Alps and was inspired by the ridge scrambling there (actually the north east ridge is supposed to be very similar to the Matterhorn. I have never climbed the Matterhorn but heard that they are a lot of lose stones and dangers of rock falls and it was the case in Torre Fino).
Our guide Jorge comes to pick us up at the hostel at 06:20 (the Argentinian 06:10) and drives us to the start. We equipe ourselves and start the 3 hours hike to the base of the Torre. Jorge explains to us that he has a lot to do at the moment, a small kid and hurt his knee a couple of days before while climbing (a lose stone hit him). After around 2:15 hours hike we arrive to a steep gouly, covered with partially hard snow. The guide is surprised, he was not expecting snow and therefore did not tell us to bring crampons. This seems a bit strange as we could see the gouly from the parking lot and I remember wondering how we would climb it. The guide had been in the area the days prior, we don’t understand why he decided not to take the crampons (he just “did not think it would be snow”). We decide to continue as long as possible besides the snow on the rocks and finally to rope up to go on snow (just soft enough to mark the steps, it goes well).
At the base of the Torre we start to climb. The second pitch is slightly more dangerous because of a section with many lose stones that force us to climb a bit more technical route and the whole rest of the day will be a “game” of not displace any rock (Andreas and I were very good at it, and disturbed no stone).
After some more scrambling (too little for my liking) we arrive at the summit. The view is beautiful (we got lucky again with the weather): on the one side the Lake Nahuel Huapi, so deep blue and scintillating, on the other side the impressive Cerro Tronador and its massive glacier. We can also see the perfectly cone shaped volcano Calbucco in Chile.
We rappel down and the walk down the snow covered gouly is much easier now that the snow has softened enough but not too much. The hike down is long and hot, especially because our guide’s knee is hurting quite a bit.
At the bottom we share a beer and our guide drives us back. Although we were a bit sceptical that he forgot the crampons, was very tired and his knee hurt we had a good day!Read more