Cerro Torre
— — a granite needle the wind has been arguing with for ten thousand years.
Not only on a wall.
“A 3,128-metre granite spire on the edge of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, the summit capped by a mushroom of rime ice the wind keeps rebuilding. For half a century it was the hardest mountain in the world to climb. From the Laguna Torre overlook on a still morning the whole massif lifts clean out of the ice — Cerro Torre, Torre Egger, Punta Herron, Cerro Standhardt in a row. from the studio
Cerro Torre, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Cerro Torre rises 3,128 metres above the eastern edge of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, on the contested Argentina-Chile border west of the Fitz Roy massif. On the Chilean side it falls within Bernardo O'Higgins National Park; the standard approach is from El Chaltén in Argentina's Los Glaciares National Park, both inscribed on UNESCO World Heritage lists. The spire is one of four — Cerro Standhardt, Punta Herron, Torre Egger, and Cerro Torre itself — strung along a single granite ridge above the Torre Glacier. A mushroom of wind-built rime ice caps the summit and reshapes itself with every storm.
The Southern Patagonian Ice Field is the third-largest expanse of continental ice in the world after Antarctica and Greenland, and the weather it pumps east is the defining fact of the range. The roaring forties strike the spires almost without obstruction, driving 100-kilometre-per-hour winds that can hold for weeks. The summit rime mushroom — the feature that makes Cerro Torre instantly recognisable — is built and unbuilt by those winds. The first undisputed ascent waited until 1974, when the Italian Ragni di Lecco team finished the West Face route. Calm windows long enough to climb arrive a handful of times a year.
Almost everyone who sees Cerro Torre sees it from the Argentine side. The trail to Laguna Torre leaves El Chaltén — Argentina's small trekking capital, founded in 1985 — and climbs roughly 9 kilometres through lenga forest to a glacial lake at the foot of the Torre Glacier. The round trip is six to seven hours and gains around 300 metres. Cloud sits on the spires most days; clear mornings are uncommon enough that locals plan their week around the forecast. The summer trekking season runs November through March. Camp Bridwell, above the lake, is reserved for climbers.