All female first ascent of Apollo 13 in Patagonia

Written by Fay Manners.

Seven metres above my last piece of protection, I stretch upwards, searching for somewhere to place more gear. To my left, cracks disappear beneath grass and moss. To my right, a smooth granite slab stretches beyond my field of vision.

I pull at a clump of vegetation. Nothing. I move back onto the slab, balancing on tiny holds, then return to the crack with my nut key and start digging. Soil rains into my eyes and down my jacket. Eventually, I uncover enough space for an offset cam.

My heart rate drops.

I look upwards. I have no idea whether I can climb the next five metres, let alone the 500 above me.

This is El Cohete, in Argentina’s remote Río Turbio IV valley, and this is exactly what we came here for: the unknown.

I had first heard about the valley from Belén Prados, who had explored the area before us. The climbing history here stretches back decades, but it remains remarkably wild and undeveloped. When Caro North and Rocío Guiñazú invited me to join them, alongside Belén and Julia Cassou, I knew almost nothing about what awaited us.

After a year and a half of planning, five women from five different backgrounds found ourselves in Bariloche, packing food, climbing equipment and camping gear into fourteen bags. From there, the journey became increasingly remote.

A boat carried us across Lago Puelo. An old tractor took us along rough tracks. Two oxen pulled us across a fast-flowing river. Then came two days on horseback, crossing rivers deep enough to reach the horses’ bellies, before we reached the Don Ropo hut.

Here, our horses stopped. To protect the environment, they were not allowed further into the valley. We loaded our equipment onto our backs and continued on foot, crossing rivers by zipline and pushing through rain-soaked forest until we reached Don Chule.

The hut became our home for the next month.

From there we could see mountains rising above the forest, but our first objective was closer to home: the walls of Oreja. We repeated an existing route, trying to understand the local granite. Then the weather turned, and our attention moved further into the valley.

That was when we saw El Cohete.

From a distance, it looked beautiful: a long, elegant mountain rising above two bright blue lakes, its summit ridge winding towards the sky. Up close, however, the reality was less straightforward. Vegetation covered the rock. Cracks were filled with soil. Water continued to seep from the wall days after rainfall.

I remember feeling disappointed.

I had travelled from England, crossed rivers and ridden horses into the mountains, and now I was looking at a wall that seemed more like a jungle than a climb. I was used to clean granite in places like Yosemite and Chamonix. Here, the first ascent was going to involve as much gardening as climbing.

Belén helped change my perspective. If we wanted to create a route that other climbers could actually repeat, we couldn't simply climb upwards and leave the mess behind us. We would need to work on the wall for weeks: fixing static ropes, cleaning cracks, placing protection and anchors, and returning again and again to make sense of what we had found.

On our first day, Belén led the opening pitch. Twenty metres above us, she shouted down:

“No holds, no protection…”

There was a pause.

“But beautiful!”

We burst out laughing.

That became something of a motto for the expedition.

The five of us developed a rhythm. One person would lead while another belayed and someone else cleaned the pitch below. Others carried food and equipment between the hut and our bivouac beside the lake, cooked meals or prepared the next day's equipment.

Nobody was simply a climber. Everyone became a cleaner, porter, route developer, cook, navigator and problem-solver.

The days were long and physical. We spent hours hanging from static lines, scrubbing lichen from cracks and pulling plants from corners. Dirt worked its way into our eyes, ears and shoes. Sometimes I wondered whether I had spent more time cleaning than climbing.

But gradually, the mountain changed.

A blank-looking corner became a sequence of holds. A vegetation-filled crack revealed perfect granite. A seemingly impossible slab became a pitch. We began to see the route not as the wall had first appeared, but as it could become.

There were moments of genuine adventure, too. On one pitch I faced a slab where traditional protection wasn't possible. I had to commit to the climbing or place temporary bolts to protect the moves. Later, watching Caro carefully work her way through another technical section, I realised how much trust the project required. We were constantly relying on one another's experience.

And while we worked, the valley kept reminding us why it mattered.

Condors circled above the walls. Hummingbirds hovered beside our anchors. Birds sang through the forest while meltwater trickled down the rock. At night, we returned to the bivouac beside the lake, watching the mountains change colour and listening to Julia play her flute beneath a sky untouched by light pollution.

After twelve days on the wall, spread across five weeks in the valley, the route was finally ready.

We called it Apollo 13: 13 pitches and around 600 metres of climbing, followed by another 650 metres of scrambling and snow ridge to the summit.

Finally, we could stop cleaning and start climbing.

Free climbing the route we had spent weeks creating was deeply satisfying. But the greatest reward wasn't reaching the summit. It was seeing the line emerge from something that initially looked impossible.

I arrived in Patagonia wanting an adventure. I left with a different understanding of exploration.

Sometimes the unknown isn't a perfect crack or an obvious line waiting to be climbed. Sometimes it's hidden beneath moss, soil and vegetation. You have to be willing to look again — and to work together long enough for the possibility to reveal itself.

That is what El Cohete taught me.

Look beyond the first glance. There may be something beautiful underneath.

About the Author

Fay Manners is a British alpinist based in the Alps. In the last few years, she has made twenty-three first ascents. Each one ventured onto untouched terrain, completely exploratory, committing to the uncertainty of ground where no human has ever climbed before. One was a major mixed climb on Trango II (6,327m) in Pakistan. Two were traditional rock climbs on big walls up to grade 7b+, both 750m long, in Greenland and Patagonia. Another was a new line on the Eiger North Face, with 33 pitches of sustained, technical and adventurous climbing. The remaining routes range from 60 to 330 metres in length, including a mixed climb in Norway and several rock climbs in Morocco, Jordan and closer to home in the Alps.

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Photos by Julia Cassau. Follow Julia on Instagram