A short history of Cerro Torre, the most controversial mountain (2012)

matheusmoreira•about 2 hours ago

> police arrested them and confiscated 102 bolts

That stood out to me... I understand that rock climbing is Serious Business to its practitioners and people on internet forums, but these two guys actually got arrested for removing those bolts, which is a whole new level of serious.

Was it really some kind of crime to do that? What happened to those guys after that?

Yossarrian22•about 2 hours ago

I can't find many details, but I had heard Hayden's name before, he sadly died of suicide after losing his partner in an avalanche ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayden_Kennedy_(climber) ). Jason Kruk appears to still be climbing to this day, so neither appeared to wind up in significant legal trouble after rightly or wrongly damaging a tourist destination.

snowwrestler•about 2 hours ago

I think you’ll be sad if you look up Hayden Kennedy.

No serious legal consequences to them from this climb, though, and the route remains clean. There was a wonderful film in this year’s Mountains On Stage film tour called Patagonian Chimeras, about a team of women who climbed the new variation by fair means.

rcpt•about 3 hours ago

Those two guys removed an established easement. Sure one can argue that it should never have been installed in the first place, but it was and apparently it became widely used. They had no business taking it down.

jandrewrogers•about 1 hour ago

One of the things I appreciate about the Andes Mountains is that in this age of social media ruining everything most areas are still pretty wild. You don’t see long queues of people waiting to take selfies. You may not see other people at all. They are second in height to the Himalaya but in most other ways are more interesting.

I feel like the governments there low-key try to keep it that way.

casumel•36 minutes ago

I did Cerro El Plomo in January and it was a very blissful experience. Barely any people and no phones. Can highly recommend.

chabes•about 2 hours ago

The mountain should have never been bolted in the first place.

The debate that it is an established route and thus should be left up comes from a place of entitlement.

If you can’t climb the mountain, what are you even doing there? There are plenty of mountains in the area that can be climbed instead.

Same can be said about the Dawn Wall of El Cap. Harding should have never bolted it. Removing his bolt ladder was the ethical move by Robbins.

ofrzeta•about 2 hours ago

What kind of ethics is it to decice that these walls must be free climbed? If you want to do that, fine, go ahead and ignore the bolts.

dwd•17 minutes ago

There is the "Leave No Trace" principle where you do not leave anything behind.

This is why you see in trad climbing the lead will place cams and nuts, while the last in the group on that pitch retrieves them.

A short history of Cerro Torre, the most controversial mountain (2012)

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