1970 Cesare Maestri Cerro Torre Compressor Route Expedition

Italy🏔️ 1 Peak

Cesare Maestri

Cesare Maestri was born on October 2, 1929, in Trento, Italy. Growing up during the tumultuous years of World War II, Maestri discovered climbing in the Brenta Dolomites. Possessed of gymnastic grace, fearless agility, and uncanny finger strength on polished limestone, he earned the famous moniker 'Il Ragno delle Dolomiti' (The Spider of the Dolomites). During the 1950s, he stunned the alpine world with daring free solo ascents of extreme sixth-grade routes, frequently down-climbing them without a rope. In 1959, Maestri turned his ambitions to Patagonia, attempting the sheer granite monolith of Cerro Torre alongside Austrian ice climber Toni Egger and Italian mountaineer Cesarino Fava. Upon returning from the mountain, Maestri claimed that he and Egger had reached the summit via the north face, but that Egger had been swept away and killed by an avalanche during the descent, taking their camera and photographic evidence with him. The claim quickly met with skepticism from elite mountaineers, sparking a fierce controversy that lasted for decades as subsequent parties found no pitons or evidence of passage above the lower snowfields. Enraged by international doubts, Maestri launched an immense siege expedition in 1970 to prove he could conquer Cerro Torre. Equipped with an Atlas Copco gasoline-driven air compressor weighing over one hundred kilograms, Maestri and his team systematically drilled approximately four hundred expansion bolts up the blank granite of the Southeast Ridge. Maestri climbed to the end of the granite wall just below the unstable summit rime mushroom, declaring the mountain conquered and breaking off several bolt heads as he descended. While the 'Compressor Route' sparked fierce worldwide debate over alpine ethics and equipment destruction, it became one of the most famous lines in Patagonia. Maestri died in Tione di Trento on January 19, 2021, at the age of ninety-one.