Three months after attempting Cerro Torre solo during the austral winter, Colin Haley is back in Patagonia, with a couple of cool climbs already under his belt.
First, Haley teamed up this time with Fabian Buhl to climb the Potter-Davis route on the north face of Aguja Poincenot. Haley describes the climb as “challenging, sustained, and very high quality.” He notes that other climbers have compared this line to the North Face of The Rostrum in Yosemite.
Among granite giants. Photo: Colin Haley
Dean Potter and Steph Davis first climbed the route, graded V 5.11 C1 WI4, in 2001. Read the route details on PATAclimb.com and in Davis’s AAJ account of the first climb, done in a 25-hour, non-stop push.
In a note to ExplorersWeb, Haley admitted that his and Buhl’s was not a cutting-edge achievement.
“This route has been climbed at least four times before, and while certainly a challenging route, is not super-extreme,” he said.
Yet he admits the route is one of exceptional quality, “even by Chaltén standards, which are already much higher than almost any other mountain range in the world.”
On Aguja Poincenot. Photo: Colin Haley
After Aguja Poincenot, the pair “cooled down,” by climbing Aguja Guillaumet by the Brenner Ridge. Haley described it as “another quality route, albeit much easier.”
He did note that both himself and his partner made an effort to capture some cool pictures. Besides the selection of his photographs featured here, Haley posted some of Buhl’s on IG:
Spiritual home
“El Chaltén certainly is a sort of second home for me, even if I have to find a different place to sleep every time that I come,” Haley told ExplorersWeb. “This month marks 20 years since my first trip here. In total, I think I have made 20 trips to Patagonia, and in total spent well more than four years of my life here.”
