Here’s another story Kate wrote for thecleanestline blog.

A few years ago, my infamous and extraordinary friend, Cedar Wright, told the world that Patagonia was “light” – as in weightless, fluffy, insubstantial, carefree. So I sit, rolling that word, like a little rock, around my mouth. He was referring to the Internet weather forecasting, the coffee, the beer, the pizza, the access to town, in contrast to the remoteness of the Karakorum or the era when Jim Donnini and Yvon Chouinard first came here. Yes, this place is light; it has paved roads and fancy hotels. But who is he to say that this makes the climbing in Patagonia light? And who am I, as a rock climber, to be writing about alpine climbing when I hardly know the difference between neve and alpine ice?

When Mikey Schaefer, Dana Drumond and I climbed the California Route on Fitz Roy, and we turned our backs on the fog-obscured, wind-blasted summit, I did not feel light.

So here is the question: When do you decide to go down? Is it after shivering for three days? Or because the cracks are full of ice? Because you don’t really have any food? Is it when you don’t know where to go, up or down, and you can’t see the summit 80 meters away, and the wind is blowing really hard? Or is it when you get turned back? But who, or what, is it that turns you back? And what would a real alpinist have done? And is it “light”?

Regardless of the answers to all those “light” questions, this adventure was right up there on the crazy scale, alongside my experience riding motorcycles the length of Vietnam just to climb in HaLong Bay…

Fitz Roy, February 5, 2009

Up on one elbow, I held a half-liter Nalgene and my rain jacket. I was trying to block the space between the sleeping bag and the ground, keep out the wind-driven snow and take my water rations all at the same time. I couldn’t even drink the water. Three of us in one sleeping bag, trying not to let the wind in … light or not light?

Day one had a 3am start from our snow cave at Paso Superior. The glacier hadn’t even frozen all the way and clouds obscured the stars. We headed towards the California Route thinking “fun in the sun in Cali” sounded reasonable for these conditions, and it was too frosty to try anything else. La Brecha is the steep icy approach to many of the routes on Fitz Roy’s southern flank, and the six or so pitches went smooth. At the base, Dana Drummond led us over the bergshrund in a blazing pink haze. The sun came up just below the clouds and blasted us with a fiery fog before disappearing along its course into the castle of clouds. Dana led each ice pitch without any problem, the easy neve went fast and the couple of steep ice pitches were fun in the early morning. We were racing the clock as pitches melted and fell away behind us.

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