Two years after the first free ascent of the legendary Riders on the Storm route on Torres del Paine's Central Tower, Stefano Ragazzo accomplished the impossible: the first solo ascent of the route. The Italian spent 15 days alone on the wall, tackling technically very challenging sections, terrible weather, and a problem with frostbitten toes.
Ragazzo climbed from February 21 to March 7. "For the first time in my life, I fought for something more than just the summit: for my life, or rather, for the constant thought, the desire to return to my girlfriend's arms," Ragazzo confessed on social media. "This thought kept me alive and was probably the main reason I can write these words now."
A Most Challenging Route
The Riders on the Storm route, first climbed in 1991 by Germans Kurt Albert, Bernd Arnold, Norbert Bätz, Peter Dittrich, and Wolfgang Güllich, is a 38-pitch, 1300-meter line on the east face of Torres del Paine's Central Tower in Patagonia. The route's difficulty is rated VI 5.12d (European scale 7c), A3. Frequent rockfall and icefall significantly increase the danger.
The route includes a complex section using ITO, followed by a large pendulum across a smooth wall on pitch 16, and a huge overhang on pitch 26. In the 35 years since the first ascent, the route has been repeated only three times. Only a powerful team consisting of Sean Villanueva O'Driscoll, Nico Favresse, Sibbe Vanhee, and photographer Drew Smith managed to finally climb it free. All this suggests that the route is challenging enough to deter many top teams. A solo ascent seemed impossible.
Miraculously Avoiding Death
A typical Patagonian storm hit the wall during Ragazzo's ascent. At one point, the worst happened: a gust of wind hit the platform, flipping him upside down. This left Ragazzo, who was sleeping inside, hanging in the void with his legs tangled in the straps, watching as some of his gear and food flew into the abyss.
"I thought it was all over, the end," he wrote. The rest of the night was epic: he spent the entire night on a small ledge, clinging to the rope, waiting for the storm to pass. He constantly moved his legs to warm them up and held onto the top of his sleeping bag to prevent it from flying away.
He survived, continued the ascent, and reached the summit the next day at 12:40 pm. The irony was that the weather cleared up, and Ragazzo stood on the summit in a windless, sunny day.
The climber is currently resting in Puerto Natales, Chile. He promised to publish a series of more detailed reports on the details of the ascent, which took two weeks and nearly cost him his life. In 2024, Ragazzo also completed the first solo ascent of the Eternal Flame route on Trango Towers in Pakistan.
Source: ExplorersWeb ↗, Angela Benavides
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