Fitzroy West Face

In recent years there have been a number of attempts to add to the single route to the summit of Fitzroy, 3,408m, via its W Face. This duo hoped to complete the line started by a Czech team in 1982, but despite this being the southern hemisphere's 'summer', conditions were so extreme that they were forced to switch to the E Face instead. (The wind picked both of them up bodily and dashed them to the ground again on Day 1!) Following calf-depth snow and five middle-grade pitches, a couple of harder (A2) pitches proved that the rest of the route was verglased, so they descended. After 450m of climbing at ED Sup, VI, A2, an attempt at a new route on Guillaumet, 2,539m, took them to within a couple of pitches of the summit before spindrift, darkness and an unprotectable and verglassed wide crack stopped further progress.