Not The Avellano Tower

I first met Dave about 5 years ago. Our conversation skipped any niceties beyond the briefest of introductions as he cornered me by the desk at the Works and started telling me about a 350m sea cliff off the Shetland Isles that had only seen one ascent. Despite our position causing an obstruction to anyone wanting to actually pay to enter the wall, Dave's description piqued my interest. And I felt slightly intimidated by his wild-eyed gaze, an expression I would come to know all too well. He invited me on holiday with him to try and climb this cliff. Not knowing any better at the time, I took the immediacy of his invitation as a compliment and reciprocated this warmth with hearty agreement. Had I known (or more precisely, had I thought more carefully about this) that this "holiday" would involve climbing the loosest terrain (I can't bring myself to use the term 'rock' here) I have ever encountered, whilst taking direct hits to the face from fulmars, and being soaked to the neck on an insufficiently tensioned tyrolean whilst accessing a virgin sea stack, I may not have been quite so fast to agree. By the end of two weeks with Dave, I had already become accustomed to, and to slightly fear, his wild-eyed look. Subsequent days climbing with Dave proved that this first impression of him was not atypical. It has since occurred to me (actually, I think he just told me straight)  that the main reason he invited me was that he thought I might be foolish enough to say 'yes', whereas everyone else he knew had already been wise enough to say 'no'.

Dave demonstrates his wild-eyed look even whilst dancing

Now that you are privy to the nature of how our friendship began, it may surprise you to hear that when Dave told me about an unclimbed 800m high tower in an unexplored corner of Patagonia, I unquestioningly agreed to join him in returning to the region to try it. The more shrewd readers of course, will not be surprised by this in the slightest, recognising as they will, that I am still foolish enough to say 'yes'.

Dave had attempted the North face of the Avellano Tower in January 2014 with his friend John, but they had underestimated the difficulty of the climbing they would encounter, and been unprepared for the scale of the thing. John is made of the same adventurous mettle as Dave, but as he also got Will (who is a bit more sensible) to join us, which goes to show that Dave definitely has the knack of persuasion.

The Avellano Tower, with Will and John

Dave and John had previously taken a day & a half to approach from a valley extending to the North-West, but described it as tough and time consuming terrain. As we intended to take pretty much everything we could think of (three weeks of food, aid racks, portaledges, kitchen sinks...) this would make their original approach impractical. Dave conceived of an alternative approach, by getting a boat across a nearby lake on the South of the valley and casually wandering up what Google Maps promised to be a gentle and pleasant stroll. We had no idea if this would work, because as far as we know no climbing team had ever been up this way. Two days before leaving the UK Dave and John were put in touch with Pascual, our local fixer.

I met John and Will at Santiago airport and we traveled onwards to the town of Coyhaique. Dave had meanwhile managed to commit himself to life-stuff at home and was going to join us a week later (by walking the original way on his tod, in order to avoid a costly boat trip on his own), by which time we should be established underneath the wall and raring to go. Whilst in Coyhaique we added a ton of food to our already excessive pile of gear. Given the plans for the coming days, I tried to avoid verbalising the phrase "enough kit to sink a boat". We waited for Pascual to collect us (he was only late twice for one pick-up, however that works) and were kindly driven down to the edge of Lago General Carrera, from where he would take us over in his boat to be met by a pair of local gouchos he had contacted via radio.

It is no exaggeration to say that Lago General Carrrera is a big lake. It would be even bigger except that half of it lies within Argentina and half in Chile. The Argentine part is named Lago Buenos Aires. Despite having two names, to me it just looks like one big lake. It is at the confluence of a myriad of mountain valleys, all funneling a turbulent set of winds across the water. Patagonian winds, of course. Suffice to say, it is not known for its millpond-like qualities. Which partly explains my surprise at how small Pascuall's boat was when we arrived at the shore at 6am. This didn't seem to perturb John however, who busied himself by bailing water out of the boat. It had only been used the previous day and it hadn't rained overnight, so I opted to not think too hard about where this water may have come from.

John bailing out the boat whilst Pascual attaches the outboard motor

With all our bags and four people in the boat, the bottom of the hull now bottomed out in the small bay where the boat was moored. Pascuall handed out long sticks and so began some enthusiastic punting (although in all fairness, this phrase could be used to describe pretty much all of my climbing activities). We go nowhere fast, and it feels like bedlam as Pascual's manner escalates from incomprehensible instructions to barked commands. None of us speak Spanish well enough to understand a word. Pascual knows this but it doesn't seem to stop him from shouting at us with increasingly frantic orders.

Eventually we're in water deep enough to start the large outboard motor. Which Pascual did with great success for about two minuts, when the engine stopped. Despite Pascual's repeated pulls on the starter cord, nothing happened. Now I'm no mechanic, but I know how what to do in this kind of situation. I told John to fish out the duct tape, which was passed to Pascual. Within two minutes we were going again.

For the most part, the journey across the lake would have been a very cold, wave-soaked, windy and nauseating journey which took us about 2 1/2 hours, but fortunately there were some memorable moments to break up the monotony. As well as taking turns to bail out water from the boat, Pascual also needed help refueling the motor. The tank read "turn off engine and remove from boat when refilling" but as this was written in English it was of little concern to Pascual, nor was the copious amounts of diesel I spilled into the water sitting in the bottom of the boat as I poured from one container to another and the boat bounced over the waves. We managed to test Pascual's calm exterior some more when Will offered to help Pascual fish out whatever it was that he was trying to find in the murky water  by his feet. Will's hand landed on an object, which he helpfully pulled out. Pascual's expression turned from that of appreciation to curiosity, to abject panic. The reason: Will had just handed him the drain plug from the bottom of the boat. Needless to say, water was pouring in from under the hull. I watched, slightly speechless, as Pascual quickly reinstalled the plug. Oh how we all laughed! Will went back to bailing out the water, a bit more urgently than before.
My feeling of nausea, caused by the boat's incessant pitching and rolling but added to by the exhaust of the motor, was disturbed yet again when the motor fell off. It didn't take me long to work out that we were too far away from either side of the lake for me to swim, so instead I just sat dumbly as Will dived across to help Pascual wrestle it back from the brink and reattach it to the edge of the boat. It was slightly unbelievable to watch, and it occurred to me that I would have found it very funny if it wasn't that I was in the boat and I thought I might drown. But again, after the event, we were all very amused.

Eventually, upon reaching the lake-side end of the Avellano Valley, we were greeted by Louie and his son Christian, with half a dozen horses. It was only 9am but I felt like I had aged 3 years already in that day. We were fed "chiva" from their stove in a hut, and John used an advanced form of charades to determine that we were eating goat (John's translation skills involve a replacement of a broad vocabulary with enthusiastic acting and making animal noises, which was surprisingly successful). Louie loaded up the horses whilst his son, excited by the fact that we were the first visitors to their valley since 1992, entertained us. Most unexpectedly by beat-boxing.

Louie, some horses, John and Will, heading up-valley

We walked the rest of the day to their farm part way up the valley. It looked like a picture-postcard idyll, especially as the sun was out and by now I had recovered from the trauma of the morning. Louie asked what we wanted for dinner, and having no other vocabulary to rely on I suggested more chiva would be wonderful. I thought that giving the easy answer would save John from having to engage in more amateur dramatics. Ten minutes later John strolled round the corner of the barn "they're killing your goat" "I beg your pardon?" "The goat. They're killing it."  Within a few minutes it was skewered and the fire was burning down to coals nicely. Louie managed to commandeer a box of our wine that had been damaged in transit and together they wasted no time in getting pissed to celebrate the presence of the first foreigners in twenty years. Despite the language barrier we learnt a bit more about their life in this valley. Louie has a wife and daughters but they opt to live in a nearby town, which leaves only three other people in the whole valley. We asked if they ever feel lonely here. Louie pointed at the incongruous Stihl calendar replete with semi-naked model brandishing a chainsaw. "Christian" he said, "he wanker!"

You better watch out goats, you might look cute but you're pretty tasty

The next morning was a typically slow South-American start, so by late morning we left the farm with just Louie leading our pack-horses today. We walked for several hours along well used single-track horse trails, used for cattle herding by the valley's five inhabitants. Unprompted, the ever adventure-thirsty John said "these trails are nice to walk on but it would feel much more adventurous if they weren't here". With prescient timing, Louie rounded a bend and proudly announced our arrival at the end of the line. We were still 7km from the base of the wall, but this was as far as the horse trails would go. Darn. We waved good bye to Louie and hoped that he wouldn't forget about us in the next three weeks, and spent the next day and a half ferrying heavy sacs up-valley, mostly through rivers and smelly bogs. It was whilt re-packing the bags to leave behind anything that was not entirely essential that a major split in expedition philosophy became apparent amongst the team: Will wanted to leave behind the rum. He tried to justify this policy by stating  "look, no expedition has ever failed due to a lack of alcohol". Fortunately John was quick with his riposte "And I don't want us to be the first!" We packed the rum.

 We made our basecamp amongst a big pile of rocks a short way from the wall. So far the sun had been shining almost all the time since we had waved good bye to Pascual. We spent a day getting our climbing gear to the base of the wall and scoping out a line. With only a little faith for blank sections we could make out a continuous series of features from bottom-to-top on the proudest part of the tower. This was exciting and intimidating in equal measure.

We were joined by Dave who wandered up to the tents one morning, having had his own adventure walking into the valley on his own over two days. It took us three days to fix all of our static ropes 250m up the wall, slowed down by surprisingly slick Yosemite-standard granite, muck-filled cracks and occasional drizzle. At the highpoint the crack had run out and would require some free-climbing to reach the next crack. Dave and Will believed it to be un-aidable but probably free-able in dry weather.

A token climbing shot. John leading and fixing rope.

We had our haul bags packed at the base. I made one quick call on the sat-phone to Tony, sat at work in Sheffield. He checked the forecast. It was bad. But it's Patagonia, so of course it's bad. We'll just sit it out.

And that's pretty much where the story ends. We stayed in the tents for two days whilst it rained and snowed, the river rose, and the tent leaked. When the maelstrom abated and we could sneak a peak at the wall through the clouds it was hard to see any rock for the amount of snow left on the face. The snow stayed there, too cold to be melted off fully, but warm enough to make the face wet for the remainder of our time. We played chess, or at least Will and I played chess. When Dave had previously asserted "I'm not playing chess, the only thing I'll do is listen to techno!"

A big rockfall came down on our fixed ropes and damaged them one night. Obviously we were all pleased that we weren't on the face when it had come down, but Dave was particularly proud that his plan of bringing me along as the 'rockfall magnet' had kept him safe. Dave and John retrieved our fixed ropes the day before Louie duly returned, and we retraced the route back to civilization.

It wasn't always sunny like this, honest! Will and I hanging out in between rounds of chess whilst Dave and John listen to techno

In the UK I have had the experience of 'taking my rack for a walk in the rain'. This seemed like the Patagonian version of this: 'taking my portaledge and every conceivable piece of outdoor gear I own for a walk'. Nice views though.

The South Avellano Tower at dusk

This trip was very generously supported by grants from the BMC and MEF, and with some excellent gear from Rab.