Conquest of the Screaming Spire: Casimiro Ferrari on the West Face of Cerro Torre

The Phantom Spire of Patagonia

Rising like a granite needle into the howling tempests of the Southern Patagonian Icefield, Cerro Torre was long feared as the most impossible mountain on planet Earth. Its vertical granite walls were capped by towering, monstrous mushrooms of fragile rime ice, continually blasted by Pacific gale-force winds exceeding one hundred miles per hour.

By the early 1970s, the mountain was also shrouded in intense international controversy. Following the contested 1959 claim by Cesare Maestri and the tragic death of Toni Egger, and Maestri’s subsequent 1970 Compressor Route—which left hundreds of steel bolts drilled into the southeast ridge without reaching the summit rime mushroom—the mountaineering world still lacked a verified, undisputed summit ascent of Cerro Torre.

To thirty-three-year-old Casimiro Ferrari, leader of the legendary Ragni della Grignetta (the Spiders of Lecco), the question demanded an unequivocal answer. Known as “El Ragnat”, Ferrari was an alpine force of nature: tough, uncompromising, and possessed by an indomitable will to conquer the wildest peaks of Patagonia through pure climbing skill.

Across the Circo de los Altares

In November 1973, Ferrari arrived at the base of Cerro Torre at the head of an elite team of Lecco climbers, including Daniele Chiappa, Mario Conti, Pino Negri, Angelo Zoia, and Claudio Corti. Rather than attempting the bolted Compressor Route, Ferrari chose the wild, untouched West Face, approachable only by hauling tons of gear across the Southern Patagonian Icefield into the forbidding amphitheater known as the Circo de los Altares.

The logistics were staggering. For weeks, the team dragged sledges across treacherous crevasses in sub-zero whiteouts, ferrying food, fixed lines, and snow gear to the foot of the 1,200-metre vertical precipice.

When climbing began, the conditions on the West Face proved terrifying. Pacific moisture, hitting the freezing granite needles at high speed, formed thick layers of aerated rime ice—featherlight, porous snow that offered zero purchase for standard pitons or ice screws. Climbers had to carve deep trenches and tunnels directly through overhanging ice mushrooms, never knowing if the delicate structures would collapse beneath their weight.

The Two-Month Siege

For nearly two months, Ferrari and his companions lived in frozen ice caves excavated into the side of the mountain. Storm after storm battered the spire, pinning the men inside their sleeping bags while winds threatened to rip their anchors from the rock. Several climbers suffered frostbite, and supplies ran perilously low.

Yet Ferrari refused to yield. Whenever the howling wind dropped for a few fleeting hours, he and his lead rope partners sprang into action, ascending iced fixed ropes and hacking their way higher up the vertical dihedrals of the upper headwall.

On January 12, 1974, a high-pressure system briefly cleared the Patagonian sky. Recognizing that this was their final chance before exhaustion and lack of food forced a retreat, Ferrari mobilized the team for an all-or-nothing push.

Tunneling Through the Summit Mushroom

Ferrari, Conti, Negri, and Chiappa reached the base of the final summit mushroom on the morning of January 13. Looming directly above them was a colossal, bulging mass of overhanging rime ice, resembling a monstrous frozen cauliflower perched over thousands of feet of empty space.

Working with ice axes, snow flukes, and specialized aluminum tools, Ferrari began burrowing an upward vertical tunnel directly through the frozen mushroom. Crampon spikes kicked through empty air inside the rime cavern while ice crystals showered down into his face and jacket.

At 5:45 PM on January 13, 1974, Casimiro Ferrari hoisted himself out of the rime tunnel and stepped onto the sunlit, flat crown of Cerro Torre’s highest ice tower. Moments later, Conti, Negri, and Chiappa joined him.

They stood together on the absolute summit rim, weeping with joy and exhaustion as the vast expanse of the Patagonian ice cap stretched away to the western horizon.

An Undisputed Triumph

Ferrari’s ascent of the West Face resolved decades of bitter skepticism and established the gold standard of Patagonian climbing. Unlike previous disputed ascents, the Ragni di Lecco left indisputable summit photographs and testimony recognized without hesitation by the global mountaineering community.

In the 1975 American Alpine Journal, the ascent was celebrated as one of the greatest alpine victories of the century. Casimiro Ferrari had conquered not merely a mountain, but the ultimate legend of impossible rock and ice, earning his rightful place in history as the true King of Patagonia.