The most perfect mountain on earth......

Ironic, isn't it, that among the least perfect mountains on earth are the seven summits. All of them are way down the list in terms of beauty and interesting climbing.

Ironic, isn't it, that among the least perfect mountains on earth are the seven summits. All of them are way down the list in terms of beauty and interesting climbing

Nobody knows for certain when the first humans laid eyes on Cerro Torre. The Tehuelche Indians roamed the land around today’s El Chaltén for some ten thousand years before colonialization, disease, and assimilation rendered them virtually extinct. The plumes of wind- and storm-driven clouds that have forever streamed from the top of Fitz Roy led the Tehuelches to believe it was a volcano. The word chaltel, or chaltén, loosely translates to “smoking mountain.”

Magellan’s famous sixteenth-century voyage sparked interest among explorers in the region that we now call Patagonia, perhaps named after a mythical beast known as the Grand Patagon. Myths enshrouded the region. When Sir Francis Drake came to Patagonia in 1578 seeking riches but experiencing only atrocious storms, he blamed the natives: “They built great fires and then cast upon them heaps of sand, as a sacrifice to the devils.”

The first westerner known to see the striking peaks of the Chaltén Massif was Spanish explorer Antonio de Viedma in 1782. One of his diary entries provides the earliest suggestion of Cerro Torre’s name, when he describes a prominent peak as “una torre”—a tower.