New Japanese climbs in Argentine Patagonia

In mid-January and early February Japanese climbers Takaaki Nagato and Katsutaka "Jumbo" Yokoyama forged two new routes above the Marconi Sur Glacier in Patagonia. On arrival they first set their sights on the South Face of Aguja St. Exupery where they made what is possibly the first free ascent, of The Last Gringo Standing (5.11c / 6c+ Toby Grohne, Jesse Huey, 2008) in a 27-hour roundtrip from Niponino to Niponino. After this "good, pretty tough, and very fun warm up", on 18 January they then went to the Marconi Sur Glacier where they made the remarkable ascent of a difficult 400m route up the West Face of Aguja El Tridente in the Cerro Pollone Group.

The new route is called Knobmania, breaches 10 pitches and was climbed ground-up over a period of two days, with a bivy in a small notch at the the top of pitch 9. The entire route was climbed free and the crux second pitch was freed on their fourth attempt with difficulties in the region of 7c. The large number of knobs on this pitch gave the route its name and as Yokoyama explained "Without those knobs, I can imagine the climbing would be way harder. Much appreciated!"

Before recuperating in El Chalten the Japanese walked to the base of Cerro Piergiorgio in search of new lines. "The red colored steep pillar on the right side of this huge wall looked cool, and seemed to be unclimbed, so we left some gear on the glacier" recounts Yokoyama.

They returned on 29 January, established camp on the obvious ramp that leads for the bottom of Piergiorgio’s massive West Face, and on 30 and 31 January first ascended their 600m Pilar Canino. "Gorgeous off widths" led past difficulties up to 7b on day 1 to the 10th pitch, where they bivied on a flat ledge below an overhanging corner,. The next day they continued, past some difficult route finding and what has been described as a "very tough overhanging offwidth. A nightmare". Seven pitches later they reached the summit ridge. Their original aim had been to climb not only the virgin pillar, but also to reach the summit proper, but once on the ridge they realized that continuing with only the gear they had was out of the question. They descended easily using rappel anchors left in-situ by the Americans Joel Kauffman and Jonathan Schaffer, who had been forced back from their attempt due to poor conditions three pitches below the summit a few weeks earlier.

Concluding after their ascent, Yokohama stated "This climb was not particularly difficult technically, but really physical because half of the route was offwidths. We are very happy to have established a new route on such an impressive wall. We’d like to thanks the two Americans, Joe Kauffman and Jonathan Schaffer, who tried more or less the same line two weeks beforehand. They kindly gave us some beta and shared the joy of climbing there. We named this line Pilar Canino because of its appearance: cracks along the entire route bit us like mad-dog."