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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 Chaltén Alpine Rescue Centre, of which Dr. Carolina Codó 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.

“Death by suffocation and hypothermia is inevitable,” Codó wrote to Climbing in an email (translated from Spanish). “Therefore, we evaluated that the [rescue team] volunteers could not be risked when the chances of survival were zero.”

Professional climber Jacob Cook was bivvied on the summit of Cerro Chaltén 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’s 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’s accident scene roughly 33 hours after the avalanche, he was struck by how unfortunate Agirre and Bilbao had been. “It’s a very dangerous place but they were also extremely unlucky to be where they were when that happened,” Cook said. “It seems unbelievably unlucky, like they could have been five meters to the left and probably survived.”

Cook blames climate change for Fitz Roy–and other Patagonian mountains—becoming 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. “There just isn’t a good descent from the mountain right now,” he said. “It’s definitely a problem facing [climbers] in El Chaltén.”

Other options include descending the North (Goretta) Pillar via the Casarotto route, which is unappealing for climbers who’ve 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’s the biggest face on Fitz Roy at 3,000 feet. “Especially onsight, you’d be rapping into an extremely committing situation,” 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 “a lot of talent doing almost everything, a lot of specialties.” She’d 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’s south face. Agirre also did the first female ascent of Groucho Marx in Chamonix and was a member of the National Women’s Mountaineering Team of the Spanish Federation of Mountain Sports and Climbing.

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Nope, the world’s tallest climbing wall is not located in a gym. It’s on the outside of the world’s cleanest waste-to-energy power plant.

Fifty-five tons of steel, 24 tons of fiberglass and plexiglass, and eight Walltopia technicians: with that and more, the tallest climbing wall in the world was constructed on the exterior of CopenHill, a part of the cleanest waste-to-energy power plant in the world. The facility is called Amager Bakke, and it’s in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The wall is 262 feet tall and 30 feet wide—enough space for five routes at four pitches each. The routes get progressively more difficult with each pitch.

And when you top out, you can ski down. A (dry) ski slope starts at the roof and winds down around the building. The plant, envisioned and designed by Bjarke Ingels, converts waste into heat and power. Unlike other refuse sites, CopenHill’s utility creates enjoyment. Visitors to the “human-made mountain,” as Ingels put it in a Wired interview, can hike, ski, and now climb.

Walltopia designed, constructed, and route-set the wall. The panels had to be cut exactly to match the bricklike pattern of the building’s exterior. Transparent panels that correspond to the building’s windows alternate with ones that blend with the shiny silver “blocks” of the building. The result is a functional wall that integrates with the architecture.

“We had to color match as close as possible the climbing wall with the metal facade,” Vasil Sharlanov told Gym Climber. Sharlanov is currently head of sales at Walltopia but was the head of design and architecture at the time of construction.

“This was actually quite difficult since the nature of the facade is shiny, and the walls have friction for climbing and are less shiny, but still had to be close enough visually,” Sharlanov said.

Walltopia used plexiglass for the transparent sections. “Screws cannot be used with plexiglass, so all connections needed to be made with bolts and fasteners,” said Ivan Natov, Walltopia’s project manager. “This is a very precise job, and you barely have any margin for error.”

By alternating fiberglass with plexiglass, Walltopia struck a balance between providing the most desirable climbing conditions and adequate light into the offices behind the wall.

Although construction was finished in November 2019, the process took longer than expected due to heavy winds. “There were days that the platform was shaking so much that it was not possible to lift it safely to the installation position,” Sharlanov said. The construction process itself was also unusual. While construction is commonly done from the ground up, this time Walltopia installed the panels into the steel structure from top to bottom and gradually removed the lift platform. The panels were assembled on the ground to make sure there were no discrepancies and then mounted with the platform.

Because winter in Denmark is too cold for climbing, route-setting was postponed until this past spring. CopenHill requires visitors to carry a multi-pitch certification to climb to the top, and those under 18 must be accompanied by a climber who is at least 21 years old. The wall is, in more ways than one, a big addition to a country not known for its climbing opportunities.

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