Patagonia Climbing Adventures :: Día IV & V

Lucia on Aguja Frey

Lucia leading "La Fisura de Jim"

Juan, Fernan and Lucia take shelter from the wind as Nico rests below the crux of "Lost Fingers"

Lost Fingers - 5.11

Blake soloing on La Fisura de Jim

Nico Favresse  and Sean Villanueva free an aid roof on Aguja Frey

Hanging out in my cave on el Campinile enjoying the view while waiting to photograph Blake and Scott on Imaginate

Patagonia Climbing Adventures :: Día II & III

Blake Herrington on El Piramidal

  

January 25

We climbed.

Gear prep

Blake enjoying another route en El Piramidal 

Tuna + mayo sandwiches. Emphasis on the mayo.

Scott Bennett on El Piramidal

Scott sending one of the tougher pitches we found on El Piramidal

Bloody wrists - vale la pena

January 26

 

8:00 Sunrise in Frey, and I can't sleep. Sunburn on my shoulders and my general stench, combine with the whipping wind outside to bring me crawling out of the tent. Yesterday was good. I tested out the hand on a couple of pitches and we topped out on El Piramidal tower. Hand held up OK. Spent the rest of the day jugging pitches (ascending a fixed rope via mechanical means) and shooting Scott and Blake. Challenging lighting conditions, but hopefully salvageable. I should have made more time to prepare for the trip, but Japan and holidays back in NC made it difficult.

12:00 Today Blake and Scott will climb two of the tougher routes on Torre Principal (No Te Olvidarmos and Sinestro Total). Ambitious to say the least. I have opted spend the day shooting lifestyle shots - or in other words, hanging around the Refugio drinking matte, swimming in the lake, napping and stuffing my face. In no particular order. 

17:00 Folks sit in a scattered circle around tables with route maps, while a guitar, harmonica and drum are passed around - occasionally accompanied by voices singing in French, Spanish, Portuguese, German or English. Every once in awhile a particularly interesting show will come on the "Frey TV" (the tower some hundred yards from camp) eliciting yells of encouragement (or cat calls) as a climber wrestles with a crux on one of the half dozen routes that spackle the tower's face. 

sleeping in

the band

Lucia studying the route guide

rope modifications

El Refugio

Looking back down the valley from El Piramidal

22:00 I was thinking to myself just this morning that I wished I was more experienced with climbing in general, and the gear I'm using in particular. I've only just started shooting and climbing seriously a couple months ago. Well, tomorrow's the test. In the morning I will get up early to meet my new friend Julian, Lucia and their crew of Argentine climbers to try and nail a couple shots on the Aguja Frey...

Sissified Artist vs - Wild Man

"Hey Forest, not to freak you out...but don't fall here." Scott calls as to me, as I gingerly balance on a spine of rock that moments before he had pranced across.

Earlier that morning, Scott, Blake and I loaded up our packs with climbing gear and left over pizza and headed out from Denver into the Lost Creek Wilderness. Two days mucking around out in the wilds with a couple of serious climbers was enough to expose rather blatantly what a sissified artist I've become. I never thought I'd use those words to describe myself. Yet as I panted up the trail to the approach, doding imaginary rattle snakes under every rock, inwardly weeping as shimmering mirages of cold beers dissipated, and eventually clawed my way up craggy faces that Blake and Scott very nearly walked up, I realized I was a lot less tough than I had thought. Oh and I also realized I have a slight fear of heights. That said, by the end of our time together I found myself "jumaring" up ropes to shoot from what I fondly refer to as "killing heights"; as well as laybacking, finger jamming, and blood smearing my way up a couple of pitches I would have scoffed at the idea of climbing a couple days earlier. 

In all this I found myself frequently chewing on my own advice that I so love to sling around..."photograph what you know". 

I do not "know" climbing, and it showed in my struggles to position myself, anticipate the "crux" moves, and execute the shots I had in mind. 

Of course, the best way to overcome this is to learn to climb. And so that is what I set out to do. 

Yet in doing so I found myself in the catch-22 that exists at the confluence of "doing" and "photographing".I cannot climb to the limit of my abilities with a camera slung over my shoulder, and I cannot photograph the way I need to without the ability to climb and position myself.

Enter the struggle between the "sissified artist" in me (who drinks orange-mocha-frappes and wears Sperry's and linen) and the ever-present "wild man" (who kicks cameras into the Aegean sea and kayaks off waterfalls). Did I mention I'm a Gemini?

While the symbiotic growth of artist and adventurer is is not always easily achieved, it is certainly something to aspire to, and I relish the trips such as this one that push the two to a head...