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On January 19, Basque climbers Amaia Agirre, 31, and Iker Bilbao, 29, were killed while descending 11,171-foot Fitz Roy in Patagonia when a large, wet avalanche swept them into a crevasse. They had successfully climbed the 5,000-foot route and had rappelled La Brecha de los Italianos鈥攁 gully notorious for its falling rock, ice, and snow鈥攂efore pausing on the glacier below to reorder their equipment. It was during this break that an avalanche released from the steep snow slopes below La Brecha, dragging Agirre and Bilbao into the crevasse. The third member of their party, Josu Linaza, ran perpendicular to the avalanche’s path and was not buried. Due to the high avalanche danger and the loss of the ropes, Linaza did not attempt to dig them out.
Linaza hiked for four hours before reaching a group of climbers who could call for a rescue. The message was sent to the unofficial rescue team of the area, the El Chalt茅n Alpine Rescue Centre, of which Dr. Carolina Cod贸 is the leader. The team met to discuss the situation, aware that they were at least six hours from the accident site, and that the chances of survival while being buried in an avalanche would drop dramatically over time.
鈥淒eath by suffocation and hypothermia is inevitable,鈥 Cod贸 wrote to Climbing聽in an email聽(translated from Spanish). 鈥淭herefore, we evaluated that the [rescue team] volunteers could not be risked when the chances of survival were zero.鈥
Professional climber Jacob Cook was bivvied on the summit of Cerro Chalt茅n when he received news of the accident. The following morning, Cook and his partners descended the route Franco-Argentina and then waited all day above La Brecha for its sun-baked walls to go into the shade, providing safer conditions to descend. Cook feared for wet avalanches, like the one that took Agirre and Bilbao, as well as for La Brecha itself.
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La Brecha used to be a gully filled with low-angle ice which held together loose rock. Now, rising temperatures have all but erased the ancient ice and have left a dangerous shooting gallery in its wake. Cook described several climbers who have had close calls in the gully recently: a friend鈥檚 leg was broken by a falling rock, and another friend had refrigerator-sized blocks fly past him while rappelling. And in February 2022, was killed by rockfall while rappelling La Brecha.
When Cook reached La Brecha鈥檚 accident scene roughly 33 hours after the avalanche, he was struck by how unfortunate Agirre and Bilbao had been. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a very dangerous place but they were also extremely unlucky to be where they were when that happened,鈥 Cook said. 鈥淚t seems unbelievably unlucky, like they could have been five meters to the left and probably survived.鈥
Cook blames climate change for Fitz Roy鈥揳nd other Patagonian mountains鈥攂ecoming more hazardous in recent years: high day-time temperatures can produce destructive wet avalanches and cause loose blocks to effectively unfreeze from alpine walls. Climbing Fitz Roy has become especially dangerous, Cook said, because La Brecha is still the best way off the peak. 鈥淭here just isn鈥檛 a good descent from the mountain right now,鈥 he said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 definitely a problem facing [climbers] in El Chalt茅n.鈥
Other options include descending the North (Goretta) Pillar via the Casarotto route, which is unappealing for climbers who鈥檝e summited via the Afanassieff as they will be rappelling more steep, technical terrain than the Franco-Argentina/La Brecha descent. There is also the descent, but Cook does not recommend it for its similarly serious nature: it鈥檚 the biggest face on Fitz Roy at 3,000 feet. 鈥淓specially onsight, you鈥檇 be rapping into an extremely committing situation,鈥 he said.
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Eneko Pou, a frequent Patagonia climber and friend of Agirre, said Agirre and Bilbao were talented young alpinists with promising futures. Pou did not know Bilbao personally, but knew he was a well-respected alpinist and a career firefighter. According to Pou, Agirre was one of the strongest alpinists in Spain and had 鈥渁 lot of talent doing almost everything, a lot of specialties.鈥 She鈥檇 climbed 5.12+ and WI 6, and went on several expeditions, including Nepal in 2021, where she participated as a medic on a new route up Chekigo鈥檚 south face. Agirre also did the first female ascent of Groucho Marx in Chamonix and was a member of the National Women鈥檚 Mountaineering Team of the Spanish Federation of Mountain Sports and Climbing.