Pilar Este freed on Cerro Chaltén (Fitz Roy) by Tasio Martín, Sean Villanueva

Basque mountaineer Tasio Martín and Sean Villanueva from Belgium have completed the first free ascent of Pilar Este, the striking 1200m line on the east face of Cerro Chaltén (Fitz Roy) in Patagonia. First attempted by a French expedition in 1968, the 1200m route became a highly sought-after goal for many different parties, until it was ultimately completed in February 1976 the Italian climbers Casimiro Ferrari and Vittorio Meles. The Italians formed part of a large Ragni di Lecco expedition comprised of Amabile Valsecchi, Gian Luigi Lanfranchi, Floriano Castelnuovo, Guerrino Cariboni, Giovanni Arrigoni, Giacomo Pattarini, Franco Baravalle and Giani Stefanon.

The lower section was freed by Nicolas Favresse and Sean Villanueva who in 2011 climbed roughly 250 meters before deviating onto El Corazon, while in 2016 Matteo Della Bordella and David Bacci made the first repeat. Della Bordella had climbed 750m of the line the previous year with Luca Schiera, Silvan Schüpbach, Luca Gianola e Pascal Fouquet, and together with Iñaki Coussirat and Cristobal Señoret much of the fixed gear including ropes and cable ladders were removed and taken back to El Chalten.

Martin and Villanueva climbed the line from Martín 6-8 March past difficulties up to 7c. Writing to planetmountain.com Martín explained "The conditions were difficult, specially for free climbing, beacuse of the icy cracks. We needed to climb with the ice axe all the time, and use it before every hand movement on several pitches. We climbed onsight as much as we could, and just needed some second attempts in 4 different pitches. We slept in belays 17 and 30 aproximately, with inflable portaledges. The last day the weather was quite worse than expected; It was snowing a little bit, windy and very low visibility, making the way down quite challenging through Franco Argentina."

The first free ascent of what is also known as the Ragni Route caps a stellar season for Martín in Patagonia, who at the start of February teamed up with Rafa Gómez Lorente in Chile to make the complete traverse of the Torres del Paine skyline. The pair climbed from 3 - 6 February, and were pinned down on the 5th due to high winds. Dubbed Travesía Doble M, this enchainment tags the peaks Torre Sur, Torre Central, Torre Norte and La Peineta and was first completed, solo, by Villanueva in February 2024.

Info: www.pataclimb.com