Back on the ledge we enjoy our standard dinner of noodles, butter and tuna, and lay out our sleeping gear. At 5 a.m. we are moving upward again. A thin, high layer of gray obscures the sky, but there's no wind. We leave our bivi-gear behind to climb unencumbered. We plan to summit and descend back to this ledge in one push.
Protection is sparse.
My belay is a comfortable seat of yellow granite. I go up the fixed ropes first to organize the top anchor. Jim comes up and leads a long pitch of intricate stemming and jamming. As we gain altitude we can see over the mountain ridge to the west onto the vast Southern Patagonian Ice Cap, the largest non-polar expanse of ice on the planet. Soaring mountains and brilliant white paint the entire western horizon.