Ouverture au Cerro San Lorenzo

Ils l'ont fait ! Au sommet après une belle expédition pour une ouverture au Cerro San Lorenzo sur un sommet encore vierge. La voie "La Milagrosa" (ED, M7, A3, 6a - 1200m) parcourt la face sud de la Torre Sur (3150m). Ouverture les 18/19 octobre 2018 par Martin Elias / François Poncet / Jérôme Sullivan. Un grand bravo pour cette réalisation sur un sommet qui faisait rêver depuis longtemps. Ci-dessous le récit de leur aventure (en anglais) par Jérôme Sullivan (et l'interview ICI).

Photo: Martin Elias

The path to Cerro Cochrane and it's satellites is easily travelled. From "Las Horquetas", a lonely hotel where Quentin Tarentino's "from dusk till dawn" might have been filmed, the asphalt turns west and changes into a dusty "estancia" road. Thousands of Huanacos, rabbits, Puma's, Niandu, Cachaña, Pichu and other animals live in this wildlife paradise. Entering the National Park of Perito Moreno means leaving the Argentina where the "estancieros", the land owners, have, for a fist-full of dollars, bought huge parcels of land for the cows to graze. A true Eldorado of the cowboy entrepreneur, but at the cost of the well being of the land itself. Man is not know for it's self regulation....fencing up the "esteppa" with infinite lengths of wire, shooting up the pumas, deforesting to create more land to graze ( to cite only a few ways man has plagued patagonia) has widely endangered the local ecosystems and often cut off the access to some of the most unique landscapes of the world. A friend was recently denied access to a remote range just because he had to cross through a patch of Estancia land to get there...sometimes the stupidity of man seems to have no limits. Some parts are protected by the parks. In Perito Moreno, Doug and Chris Tompkins generously bought and donated the estancia Rincon and the land of "rio Lacteo" to the park, giving access to the east face of Cerro Cochrane. Doug compared the mountain to a Argentinian Everest because of it's shape and gigantic proportions. "...La mas grande y desafiante de las paredes patagonicas...". A truly great man in his actions to preserve the land, and i can only imagine a huge lover of patagonia.

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