Monte Bove – Cordillera Darwin

Do you know a place in the world that is pristine, remote, so difficult to access that there are uncharted mountains everywhere? I know a place like this. This is Darwin Range. It is 50 km away from home…Well… If we were birds, because, now in this bordered and bureaucratic world, mountaineering can be a real challenge before reel action.  Darwin range is,  beside Antarctica, the uttermost Range. Parts of the Andes, it is covered by Ice fields and has mythical mountains such as Monte Darwin, Sarmiento, Shipton, Bove, Roncagli, Ada that had been climbed only a few times for some. With difficult weather, it is even harder to find a window to attempt ascents, especially close to the Pacific Ocean. Do not count on rescue as it is a very difficult place to access, generally very windy. 

Sebastian and I made a few ascents and did explore new routes in this fabulous range. We had also our first failed ascent together. It was a success in a sense:  we came back alive, and we have learnt a lot. 

Let me tell you what happened…

We decided to spend our honeymoon in Darwin Range and climb Monte Bove. It is a very difficult organization and logistic because it is in Chile so you have to cross a border and it is only possible by sea, no other way in is authorized. Monte Bove is ubicated in a new national Park in Chile called Yendegaia so you need to have permissions. It is a military area, and, as it was not enough they are actually building a new road to connect the north of Tierra del Fuego with this area. It is almost impossible to pass through all this chain of authorization. 

But you know what? Somehow we did it. We had some authorizations, (not all of them) and decided to take our chance. We sailed to Puerto Williams, to do the paper work and take a Ferry. 5 hours in a very cold sailboat. The Beagle was wavy, inside we felt like vomiting, outside we were freezing. Then we took a ferry, and it was another story. People were really friendly. They even gave us blanket and we had dinner! This Ferry is a connection between Puerto Williams and Punta Arenas. Once in a while it goes to Yendegaia where the military are working. We were lucky: some workers were traveling in the same ferry so in Yendegaia we mixed between them. Militars came straight towards us. Controlled some papers and suddenly, a miracle: one of them got very enthusiastic with our equipment, especially our skies! (we decided to ski Glacier Bove so we could access the summit faster and get back faster). I explained it was our honeymoon. The army guy had already grabbed some of our skies and said: do not put the tent, we will give you an empty house. That was incredible. We have been so lucky. We explained where we wanted to go, exchanged inreach contacts in case of emergency etc… Suddenly, another miracle. One of them told us: you have to know where to cross the Yendegaia River. He explained us. This was really a critical point to start our expedition, we already knew that we could lose a precious amount of time looking for the perfect crossing! They just solved our problem in 2 minutes. The next day, we were leaving very early. We left at 5 because we were scared the military would change their mind and decide it was not safe to let us go.  We were so heavy, we really struggled with so much weight. I had more than 25 kg, half of my own weight and Seba 30. Food for 5 days, that we will leave in strategic points, all our gear: skis, ice axes, friends, rope, ski shoes… We were walking for 2 hours when suddenly a small bus came from the road. Full of militaries going to work building the road. We thought they were going to tell us not to walk on the road, but no… they invited us to get in. They explained:  “they told us to show you where to cross the river”… and they did. Thanks to all of them we could cross well. The river was freezing cold, we had water till our back (well especially me , Sebastian is much taller!) But we were happy  to save some hours! 

After walking toward the north through the valley we headed west through Rio Niemeyer valley. We struggled to get through the dense forest with our skies on our backs…Seba and I were crawling under Calafate trees and their spines… Finally we reached our base camp after a long day and were close to the front of the moraine. What we saw on satellite images was really different in real life! Huge 10 to 15  meters blocks were composing the front of the moraine. The day after we arrived we woke up really early and started to climb the wall of rocks… Sometimes we had to abseil to go up again. After 3 hours we eventually rich the glacier… we had a break… we put on our skies. At the beginning it was really slippery in some parts but then we started to have enough snow. Eventually we reached the Mountain front. The panorama was outstanding. We were in front of 3 beautiful mountains: Bove , Ada and Roncagli. Bove had been climbed twice. Once by Shipton in the 70ies and another by Sebastian de la Cruz in the 1990s with a TV Program called Al filo del imposible. That was it. Ada had been climbed in 2011 by Simon Yates. Roncagli is a monster. Ibai Rico y Jon Inoriza did climb the mountain in 2022! 

See? Cordillera Darwin is a place to explore… Just organize it well and ask for permission… It is a long term planification. 

After crossing the glacier we arrived where  we could start to ski uphill, between its crevasse. Then we reached the plateau… We had a little discussion with my loving partner because we were tied together with the rope and my steps are not his steps. Above us huge seracs were regularly falling: this was obvious according to the quantities of hard blocks everywhere on the glacier.  I wanted to untie the rope and just go free without being tied to each other so I could go at my own speed and stop hitting frozen seracs on the ground: Seba has giant legs and I was literally running with my skis behind him!  But love was stronger: we did not divorce that day. 

We had nice skiing passing the plateau to go to the western face. We were so excited to ski in places where no one had skied before. We put our tent up to spend the night and attack the summit the day after. We made a shelter with blocks of snow to protect our tent from the wind. And then… we tried to sleep. This has been a horrible night:

We made so many mistakes: we have learned from them. We did not go to the summit not because we could not: we already had done the most difficult part for sure. We have not been to the top because we were tired, cold, with a doubt regarding the weather forecast. 

Because we struggled so much with the weight the first day we decided to go light: and we discard very important things that were basics. 

-one sleeping bag for 2: stupid, we could not even zip it when it was freezing cold. We even cut a part of the NORTHFACE Sleeping bag to try to enter my head! I will spare you the details…

-we had no jet boil: so we ran out of water faster than we thought. 

We did not sleep at all.

Outside the wind was blowing, throwing snow towards our tent. In the early morning Sebastian went out to shovel.

-The night has been so cold and it condensed so much in the tent that everything in the tent was covered with surface frost. 

We had to make a decision. We opted for safety: we had only two more days . We were not sure about the weather and our energy and focus was not 100% anymore.  We could not afford being in trouble here. It was simply not a possibility. So, we decided to go back.  And we started to pack and ski downhill.

The way down was challenging. Snow was hard, we skied a steep slope in between crevasses to reach the flatter eastern glacier. This has been fast and quite enjoyable.

But you know what, it still was an adventure. We made our own route. And we came back and will never forget Monte Bove and its wonderful surroundings… Another day we will climb Monte Bove. We do learn more from our mistakes. This mountain will still be here.