The Musical Soloist: Sean Villanueva O'Driscoll's Moonwalk Traverse of Fitz Roy

In February 2021, while international travel remained paralyzed by global pandemic lockdowns, Belgian big-wall free climber Sean Villanueva O’Driscoll found himself comfortably marooned in the small Patagonian outpost of El Chaltén. With his regular climbing partners scattered across the Atlantic and a rare, extended weather window developing over the Southern Patagonian Icefield, Villanueva conceived a climb so audacious that many considered it unthinkable: a solitary traverse of the entire jagged skyline of the Fitz Roy massif.

In 2014, American titans Tommy Caldwell and Alex Honnold had completed the first traverse of the range, climbing from north to south over five days, a feat that earned them the Piolet d’Or. Villanueva decided to tackle the entire ridgeline completely alone, and in reverse—from south to north—naming his project “The Moonwalk Traverse.”

Solitary Rhythm on the Spires

On February 5, 2021, on his fortieth birthday, Villanueva walked out from El Chaltén toward the base of Aguja de l’S. His pack was astonishingly small: a light sleeping bag, a single small stove, a few pounds of dried food, a damaged sixty-meter rope with a core-shot section near the middle, and his faithful Irish tin whistle.

Climbing alone, Villanueva employed a rhythmic self-belay system, leading difficult pitches, fixing his rope, and cleaning his gear. On easier fifth-class terrain, he climbed without a rope, moving with serene, joyful confidence across wind-scoured granite crests. Over the first three days, he systematically ticked off Aguja de l’S, Aguja Saint-Exupéry, Aguja Rafael Juárez, and Aguja Poincenot. Each evening, as darkness fell and sub-zero cold gripped the granite towers, Villanueva sat in his bivy sack perched on knife-edge granite ledges, pulling out his tin whistle and piping Irish jigs into the silent Patagonian void.

The Colossus of Fitz Roy

The supreme crux of the traverse was Cerro Fitz Roy itself (3,405m). Approaching the massive granite fang from the south, Villanueva ascended the Franco-Argentine Route, navigating frozen crack systems choked with verglas. Battling exhaustion, hunger, and rising winds, he summitted Fitz Roy on February 8, peering down through swirling clouds at the immense glacier below.

Rather than descending to the safety of the valley, Villanueva pressed relentlessly northward along the serrated crest. Rapelling into the notch of the Val Biois, he soloed through the jagged pinnacles of Aguja Mermoz and Aguja Guillaumet. Every rappel was a high-stakes calculation; with his damaged rope and swirling gales, a jammed line would have meant certain disaster.

The Return to the Forest

On February 10, 2021, six days after setting foot on the granite, Sean Villanueva scrambled down the scree of Paso Guillaumet and stepped onto the soft green moss of the beech forest. He had climbed and rappelled more than five thousand vertical meters across nine towering peaks, completely alone.

When news of the Moonwalk Traverse reached the global alpine community, it was celebrated as a milestone of solitary imagination, technical mastery, and spiritual lightness. In late 2021, the jury of the Piolets d’Or awarded Sean Villanueva his second Golden Ice Axe, recognizing an ascent that combined the pinnacle of difficulty with the purest joy of mountaineering.