A short history of Cerro Torre, the most controversial mountain (2012)

Maestri's claimed first ascent and his compressor route made the history of Cerro Torre controversial, and the later removal of the bolts added to this controversy. However, the unfortunately now deceased climbing prodigy David Lama also had his own scandal on the compressor route while sponsored by Red Bull.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lama#Cerro_Torre

Those two guys removed an established easement. Sure one can argue that it should never have been installed in the first place, but it was and apparently it became widely used. They had no business taking it down.

> police arrested them and confiscated 102 bolts

That stood out to me... I understand that rock climbing is Serious Business to its practitioners and people on internet forums, but these two guys actually got arrested for removing those bolts, which is a whole new level of serious.

Was it really some kind of crime to do that? What happened to those guys after that?

Curious to know the basis on which they were arrested. I guess it's something in the realm of criminal damage to public property. But that would imply that Maestri's bolts had become part of the public property that is the mountain. I assume Maestri was not arrested for inserting the bolts.

Not being a mountain climber at all I don't really have an opinion on this, but I do naturally sympathise with the anti-bolt guys because I am fond of the idea of leaving no trace.

If you like this story, I highly recommend “The Tower”, a book on this topic by Kelly Cordes. This book, although history, reads like an outdoor adventure mystery thriller.

Check out Kelly’s intro on his blog, where he also shares his famous Marg recipe: https://kellycordes.com/2014/11/26/my-cerro-torre-book-and-m....

I can personally attest, that Kelly makes the best Margs.

My first reaction to the title was "how can a mountain be controversial?!", and, even after reading the article, the title still sounds wrong to me. I mean, a mountain is a mountain, it just... exists in a very undisputable way. What climbers did or didn't do on that mountain can be controversial, but not the mountain itself.

Ofc we all know this but its nice to be reminded that gatekeeping and nerdery is not limited to tech forums.

One of the things I appreciate about the Andes Mountains is that in this age of social media ruining everything most areas are still pretty wild. You don’t see long queues of people waiting to take selfies. You may not see other people at all. They are second in height to the Himalaya but in most other ways are more interesting.

I feel like the governments there low-key try to keep it that way.

Alex Honnold has a series about it on his podcast I'd recommend listening to. (The Greatest Lie)

Nice read. Very interesting.

Cerro Torre means "tower hill". Appropiate.

The mountain should have never been bolted in the first place.

The debate that it is an established route and thus should be left up comes from a place of entitlement.

If you can’t climb the mountain, what are you even doing there? There are plenty of mountains in the area that can be climbed instead.

Same can be said about the Dawn Wall of El Cap. Harding should have never bolted it. Removing his bolt ladder was the ethical move by Robbins.