The glacier Perito Moreno (Pcia de Santa Cruz)

1877: Nicolàs Avellaneda has been in power for 3 years. Like his predecessors since the beginning of the century, he must face the incursions of the Indian tribes on the lands of the colonists located at the North of Rio Negro and its affluent Rio Neuquen.
But the situation worsens: The Indians organized in Confederations of Tribes, led by Cacique Namuncura approach Buenos Aires dangerously: somes certify “malones” (raids) particularly bloody in the towns of Tandil or Azul.
The President can not allow women and children still continue to be kidnapped, that other colonists are killed. He thus decides to raise an army to put an end to these exactions.
Alsina takes the command of it but Roca succeeds to him very quickly, achieving zealously and and with ferocity his job. At the head of 5 columns of 6000 men, he obtains fulgurating results: 1600 Indians are killed, 10000 are taken prisoners, 6 chiefs are executed, the others take refuge in the Andes and more in the South.
1880: glorified by his victories, Roca is elected President of the Republic, and completes between 1881 and 1884 what the history will retain under the name of “Campaign of the desert”.
The pacification of these vast wide opens the way to their exploration. A 22 year old naturalist named Francisco Pascasio Moreno thus discovers for the first time the imposing landscapes of Patagonia in 1874.
One year later, he returns there. His meeting with the Cacique Shaihueque enables him to be the first white man to see the Large Lake, the Nahuel Huapi.
Hardly he wrote the story of his last voyage that he is off to Patagonia again: more in the South this time. He remembers the stories of sailors that he could read. He knows that somewhere in this desert vastness draws up a fabulous mountain. When he sees it a long way away, beyond lacteous blue water of the Lake Viedma, he believes that it is a volcano. He baptizes it instinctively “Fitz Roy”, of the name of the commander of the Beagle which crossed off the Chilean coasts in 1834 and who mentioned its existence in his log book.
Moreno will take many hydrographic and topographic readings of the area, will define the layout of the argentino-Chilean border. The only expanding glacier of the planet declared world inheritance of humanity,is today called after his name.

Lionel Terray and Guido Magnone, conquerors of the impossible.

Several mountains of legend became accessible to a greater number of people. The access roads to certain summits are even true motorways: it is the case of the Mount Blanc by the way of the Cristalliers, of Kilimandjaro by the Naremoru way, Aconcagua by North, even if some their faces can be climbed only by experienced mountaineers .
It is not the case of the Fitz Roy. Only a few tens of ropes arrived at the summit of this mythical mountain.
Deified by the Indian tribes of the area, “el Chalten” (its original name ), in the opinion of the rare explorers to have seen it, was considered inaccessible, due to its 1600 meters of vertical wall.
1952: since 20 days already, although it chose the period of the southern summer to try the rise of it, a particularly trained mountaineers expedition suffer with the attacks of the cold and the biting wind come from the area of the large Chilean glaciers, on the other side of the mountain. In tents transformed into igloo by the successive snowstorms, they wait the favorable moment. They have time to choose their way and to decipher it. They will choose the south-eastern way.

The last bivouac is installed at the place called “the breach of the Italians”. This morning when 2 men decide to leave, the conditions seem favorable.
Quickly however the rise becomes nightmarish and invites them to surpass themselves. Extreme technical difficulties (of level 6 of free climbing and A3 level of artificial climbing) push them to renounce. At the cost of a will out of the ordinary and of an unimaginable effort, Lionel Terray and Guido Magnone spend 2 days to arrive at the summit. We are the 2nd of February, 1952.

Lionel Terray (Fr.1921-1965) winner of the Northern face of Grandes Jorasses in 1946, the Northern face of Eiger in 1947, Annapurna in 1950 (with Maurice Herzog), of Makalu in 1955 ,
Author of the “conquerors of the useless" Ed. Guérin
Guido Magnone (It.1917- ) northern face of Eiger in 1952, first of the western face of the Drus, Makalu in 1955

Le Fitz Roy

89 kilometers separate the Fitz Roy from the Ruta 40. And yet, for a long time already, its silhouette stands out on the horizon beyond lacteous blue water of the Lake Viedma.

As a mirage appearing and disappearing as it pleases to the clouds which surround it, its higher summit draws up such the rise of Chartres cathedral across the Beauce wheatfields.

With this difference that here nothing grows except the stunted grasses, victims as well of the cold as of the burn of a relentless sun.

Nothing lives either, except some nandus, tatus or guanacos which resists to the violent winds came down from the large Chilean glaciers on the other side of the mountain.

Recently macadamized, the Ruta 23, only access road to El Chalten, stretches immense straight lines to the feet of the giant.

The track last kilometers allow to understand the fascination this mountain exerted on the greatest mountaineers, and why it was conquered only very few times since 1952 (*).
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Indescribable fascination except perhaps by those who left their name to the summits which surround it: Guillaumet, Mermoz and…Saint Exupéry.

(*) article "Lionel Terray et Guido Magnone"