Jason Kruk – Cerro Torre Unleashed
Ironically, Kruk had no intention of climbing the Compressor Route this year. “It was probably our Plan C of the route we wanted to climb on Cerro Torre,” says Kruk. Their main goal was to climb as many of the four Torres as possible. So they hit them from right to left, starting with Cerro Standhardt, Punta Herron, and Torre Egger. Cerro Torre was the last tower up.
“My vote was to try a new route on the north face of Cerro Torre” Kruk says, “because I tried the Southeast Ridge already and I didn’t like the fact you had to climb near all those bolts.” Kruk is referring to last year when he and Chris Geisler attempted to climb the Compressor Route by fair means and came within 100 meters of the summit.
That climb seemed to leave a bad taste in his mouth. First, there were Maestri’s bolts. The bolts made the climb feel like a “contrived situation”, he says. “I love the unknown in climbing. That’s why I do it, for the adventure and the unknown. The headwall of Cerro Torre was such a big unknown for me. It was soured by having those bolts in place.”
Second, Kruk and Geisler were climbing the Southeast Ridge at the same time Austrian climber, David Lama, was working the route. Lama endured his own controversy when his sponsor, Red Bull, hired a film crew to shoot an attempt in 2010 and drilled at least 30 bolts into the rock. In 2011, Lama climbed the aid bolts of the Compressor Route while a crew filmed from a helicopter. Kruk remembers the helicopter buzzing over his head all day.
Kruk and Kennedy’s goal to try a new route on the north face however, was thwarted by the one constant that messes up most climbing plans in Patagonia – the weather. Paradoxically, it wasn’t blowing snowstorms and whiteout conditions this time, but blues skies and warm temperatures. The weather this season was one of the driest and warmest in memory. The downside was that the low snow pack and warm air melted out a lot of rocks increasing the rockfall hazard and putting many climbs out of condition.
Kruk was to find out later just how dangerous some of the Patagonian routes were when a friend of his was killed by falling rock. Carlyle Norman was a 29 year-old Canmore resident who Kruk first met in Squamish seven years ago. The accident happened the same day he and Kennedy were on their 13 hour push to the summit.
“Fair Means,” the unofficial rules
Many online posts criticize the pair for chopping the bolts without consulting other climbers. But that’s not what comes out in a conversation with Kruk.
“Amongst my peers in the alpine climbing world, we have talked about removing the bolts for years — years and years and years,” says Kruk. He talks about life in base camp and El Chaltén, the town where climbers stay to wait out bad weather. Kruk says the community gathers almost daily around cocktails. This is where climbers hash out details of what constitutes fair means and who gets the right to chop the bolts.
“And of course during this time, we had these discussions with people who had no intention of climbing Cerro Torre. It’s just something we liked to talk about,” says Kruk. “So this season, we definitely talked about the pros and cons of taking out the bolts.”
But when the decision was made to make a fair means ascent of the Compressor Route, Kruk says he and Kennedy put the bolt issue aside so they could focus on their climb. “As soon as you start thinking of the summit or anything beyond that next step in the climb, that’s just BS that clogs your head and takes away your energy from the moment,” he says.
On January 15th, the weather was clear and sunny, and the forecast looked good for the next day and half, followed by two crappy days and then another longer window of five days. They decided to make their attempt sooner rather than later. So why take the chance the weather may close in? Partly, they just wanted to climb.
But there was something else. David Lama was planning to try and free the Compressor Route during the five day weather window. Kruk explains: “That was extra incentive, not because we did not want to share the route with him but because we didn’t want to share the route with a helicopter 14 hours a day.” Another reason, although Kruk does not mention it; by being first in a race to the top, he and Kennedy would have first dibs on deciding the fate of the bolts.
Kruk’s face lights up when he begins describing the climb. “Our plan was to get up to the headwall and be as fresh as possible and do it as quick as possible.” Kruk led all the mixed climbing below on the lower ridge, Kennedy all the rock pitches. And when they got to the headwall, Kennedy ”just threw down” and did all the leading. At one point they did a pendulum traverse out to the arête. “We got out there and loaded in a four-cam anchor because you’re basically on the edge of the moon perched on the very arête of the Cerro Torre headwall.”
Some of the harshest criticisms online regard Kruk and Kennedy’s decision to use two of Maestri’s belay anchors on their ascent. They say it’s hypocritical to criticize and defend their removal when they used the bolts on the way up. Kruk acknowledges that could be used as a point against them. In fact, on his attempt with Chris Geisler last year, he built gear anchors right next to Maestri’s rappel line for that very reason. They could have done the same this year too. But during one of the many cocktail hour gatherings when Kruk and Kennedy discussed with other climbers what constitutes a fair means ascent, the team decided if the Compressor Route was going to be removed, Meastri’s rappel bolts should stay.
Keeping the rappel anchors in was really a decision based on aesthetics and the belief that the route would become the most popular on Cerro Torre. Kruk explains it this way, “If our goal was respect for the mountain, it just seemed leaving these two bolts was the better trade off between a decaying six-piece anchor.”
Kruk says hashing out the fate of the rappel bolts beforehand during those unofficial rules meetings in the many cocktail hours meant when they got up to those stations they would use them. “I’m not going to make a point to the whole world because this isn’t about them, this is about me.” And he adds, “If they don’t get it, that is their problem. They are not going to touch Cerro Torre anyway.”
Kruk insists that just because they decided they were going to leave the rappel bolts didn’t mean they had also decided for sure to chop the rest of the bolts. That decision didn’t happen until after they reached the top and weighed the pros and cons once more. Interestingly, Kruk says at first he was siding with leaving in them in. “If we topped out and hadn’t thought about it at all and rapped, I would have left them for sure.”
In the end, Kruk believes he made the decision based on what was best for the mountain, putting aside his own preference to avoid controversy.
“It boils down to Cerro Torre is such a rad mountain that it deserves to be the raddest mountain on the planet. I couldn’t sleep knowing that a violent crime was committed against it and it had no restitution.”
A job left undone
Kruk and Kennedy have taken flak for removing only a quarter of the Maestri bolts and leaving the job unfinished. Kruk says there’s an explanation for that. A climbing team coming up the Compressor Route was on their third day on the mountain with little sleep. Kruk and Kennedy waited for them to top out, and then felt it was safer for their “knackered friends” if they were to leave the bolts below the headwall. The Compressor rappel line diverges at this point with a newer descent. Kruk was worried their friends would not know where to go in their condition so thought it best to leave Maestri’s bolts in for the lower section.
Aside from the brief high fives on the peak, Kruk and Kennedy didn’t get much chance to celebrate or savour their climb. Walking into base camp, the pair were told their friend Carlyle Norman had been hit by rockfall.
“Hayden described it as the highest of highs and then the lowest of lows going on into base camp and you realize it didn’t matter,” says Kruk.
El Chaltén: Kruk and Kennedy, the Gringos
For Kruk and Kennedy the hits kept coming. After taking a couple days in camp to deal with her death, the pair packed their stuff and headed for town. The people of El Chaltén were waiting and they weren’t happy. Kruk found out just how unhappy they were. He went straight to the telephone office before eating or showering. He wanted to call Norman’s friends back home who would be coming down to help her family. But before he could make the call, Kruk was confronted by a crowd of 40 angry people. They had called the police and encircled him, yelling at him for chopping the bolts.
“Everybody for the most part in that mob was a year-round El Chaltén resident. And of all those year round Chaltén residents, almost none of those people are alpine climbers. So I had the bread maker there yelling at me telling me why I did a bad thing by removing the bolts of Cerro Torre,” says Kruk.
Kruk was stunned this was happening. ”It was hard because there were friends of mine in the mob, wearing jackets that Hayden and I had given them. It was bizarre.”
Describing why the town turned on them defies a simple explanation, and Kruk said he is reluctant to air their “dirty laundry”, because “that is not really all that fair”. He explains the town does have significant social problems that nobody wants to talk about. And he suggests their actions came from the town’s fierce nationalism and ethnocentrism.
“When two gringos go and chop bolts on their mountain,” says Kruk, “that is something they can really get worked up about and release all this frustration.”
The police came and hauled Kruk and Kennedy off to the station. They held them there for four hours. If it wasn’t for their Argentinean friend, Rolando Garibotti, it could have been longer. Garibotti called up a lawyer before talking to the police. A deal was worked out that resulted in Kruk and Kennedy handing the Maestri bolts over so the bolts could go to the museum. Ironically, that’s what the pair wanted in the first place.
Looking back on that incident, Kruk is confused and disappointed by the town’s reaction. “I can take everybody who slanders me on the Internet, but we uncovered some really deep significant social problems of the town, and we were the scapegoats for those problems,” he says.
Alpine vs Sport Climbing ethics on Cerro Torre
Unlike their smooth, rapid ascent of Cerro Torre, developments afterwards were turning their post climb into an epic. First came the death of their friend. Then, the townspeople turned against them and wanted them jailed. The next blow came a few days later when Lama pulled off the first free ascent of Cerro Torre. Almost immediately, Internet posters said that Lama’s free ascent trumped Kruk and Kennedy’s ‘fair means’ climb.
Lama added fuel to controversy when he told Rock & Ice Magazine that the bolts had historic value and should never have been chopped. “Even though maybe the bolts shouldn’t be up there in the first place, I believe nobody should be bold and assume to have the right to chop them.”
Kruk readily admits Lama’s climb was a significant achievement, “What David did was totally badass, and he totally threw down. I was really impressed.” Kruk and Kennedy brought him beers afterwards to congratulate him on his climb. But it’s clear they had a difference of opinion over ethics and climbing Cerro Torre. Kruk was one of the people after all, to convince Lama not to rap bolt the Compressor Route the year before.
“Don’t get me wrong I was so impressed with his ascent,” says Kruk, “but to call it an alpine climb, I’m not sure it qualifies. There will always be a very large asterisk, after his ascent, due to the fact that he had two Austrian mountain guides and a camera man hanging above him, at times as close as ten feet above him.”
Moreover, says Kruk, his team had constant communication with a helicopter at all hours of the day, circling and landing on the summit with whatever they needed. Kruk says while it’s a fantastic “athletic achievement”, the style Lama employed is different from what he and Kennedy did, going up on their own, without support and no beta of the difficulties ahead.
“Having mountain guides hanging off a rope saying ‘oh yeah, there’s a crimp two feet up’ and left, changes things. It’s not really alpine climbing in my definition.”
The climbing world seemed to view both ascents through the same lens, but each approached Cerro Torre with different philosophies and ethics. For Kruk, it is just one more betrayal around their climb and the mountain. “I just want people to ask me about how cool the climbing was up there so it stokes up other people to go up there,” he says. “There is so much negativity, and it should just be all good.”
The bolt chopping generated a lot of blow back for Kruk and Kennedy. The duo seems resigned that it’s the price to pay for advancing climbing standards. They take this burden with little complaint. “It would be sad if somebody who didn’t deal well with criticism took the fall”, says Kruk. “We can take all the criticism because we are just nice unassuming, non threatening guys.”
Kruk and Kennedy could probably do without the controversy, but Kruk hopes there could be something positive to come out of it – a ban on motorized power drilling in the national park. “That would be perfect,” says Kruk. And if the Cerro Torre could talk it would probably agree.
