Climbers Iker Bilbao (29 years old, from Durango, Bizkaia) and Amaia Agirre (31 years old, from Urnieta, Gipuzkoa) have been missing since yesterday when they were first buried by a snow avalanche and dragged to the bottom of a crevasse, minutes after Reaching the base of Fitz Roy (3,405 meters), the iconic southern Patagonian iceberg on the border of Argentina and Chile. Both were part of a rope of three climbers and had just completed the Afanassieff route to Fitz Roy, opened in 1979 on the north-western slope of the mountain by a group of four French climbers. After rappelling down the Franco-Argentine route, the trio overcame the Italian Gap and were caught by the avalanche when all difficulties seemed to be over. Josu Linaza (31 years old) from Igorre in Biscay survived the accident unharmed and reached the Argentinian town of El Chaltén, which is near the mountain, to get help.
In this community all accidents go through Dr. Carolina Codó, Founder and Director of the El Chaltén Relief Commission: “I think there is no hope for the two who disappeared. The survivor searched for them for almost an hour without seeing a trace and found that the avalanche had washed them to the bottom of a huge fissure in the glacier. Right now it’s 30 degrees (it’s summer) and the 0 isotherm is over 4,000 meters, so I can’t even send anyone to look for the bodies because that would put them in tremendous danger. When temperatures drop, we will try to organize a small team to assess the situation and decide if it is possible to recover the bodies,” explains Dr. Codo. El Chaltén lacks a professional rescue group, and all members are benevolent: rescues are pure craftsmanship, teamwork is never without danger. Their work is crucial in an area experiencing a tourist explosion that is filling the isolated city with hikers and climbers from around the world. dr Codó himself spent years requesting, almost summoning, a rescue helicopter for the area, a request that never materialized.
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Iker Bilbao, a firefighter by trade, was a highly respected mountaineer in the Basque region of Duranguesado and in recent years had turned more and more to mountaineering, a facet to which Amaia Agirre had dedicated herself completely: despite completing her medical studies, she was part of the Spanish Mountaineering and Climbing Federation (FEDME) national women’s mountaineering teams and had major ascents such as the first female ascents of the Groucho Marx de las Grandes Jorasses route or the Eternal Flame in her Tower No Name syllabus in Karakorum, Pakistan. Amaia Agirre belonged to the Aragonese Mountain Association, having lived in Huesca for the last few years, while Iker belonged to the Basque Association. Now both associations and FEDME are working to speed up bureaucratic procedures, insurance work and any management submitted to local authorities.
“The news fell like a stone in the city, but it is already the third fatal accident of the season. A Swiss climber slipped on the Standhardt Needle and we have not yet been able to recover the body and a 25-year-old North American woman died of hypothermia after being caught by a sudden change in weather at the Guillaumet Needle,” reveals Dr Codo. “We have asked the climbers at Fitz Roy via radio and satellite messages for their cooperation in trying to find evidence of the two missing persons leading us to be able to search for their remains, but it is no easy task and we don’t have high hopes because they could be near the surface or buried under meters of snow,” explains Caro Codó.
The arrival of internet and mobile telephony in El Chaltén, more than two hundred kilometers from El Calafate, the first town with services in the area, radically changed the expectations of climbers. This, coupled with climate change offering slightly more generous fair-weather windows than before, allows climbers to face the calm periods when winds ease and the violent storms that have traditionally plagued their mountains fade away. When this happens there is a rush of climbers looking for a reasonable target based on the expected duration of the fair weather gap. As a result, activity in this area has increased remarkably in recent years, as have accidents. The stakes involved in climbing in the shadow of Fitz Roy or the equally legendary Cerro Torre are enormous. Nobody can rely on a rescue helicopter in an emergency. In turn, the selfless work of a few, the desire to help local climbers, the rescue courses given by European professionals and the private search for funds to at least acquire the necessary rescue materials have already saved numerous lives.
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