American climbers Hayden Kennedy and Canadian Jason Kruk made the first on Cerro Torre’s southeast ridge on Monday in Patagonia. The pair climbed the 10,262-foot peak without using any of the 450 bolts placed by first acensionist Cesare Maestri in 1970. Alpinist Colin Haley, who watched the pair through a camera zoom lens, estimated that the climbers took approximately 13 hours to climb from their bivy on the shoulder of the mountain to the summit. Maestri’s use of a gas-powered compressor to drill a bolt ladder up the route’s final two pitches鈥攁 decision that significantly reduced the difficulty of the climb鈥攈as long been controversial.
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