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| Photography: Chilean-Japanese expedition to the
Central Andes. Courtesy of Claudio Lucero. |
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| Camp at entrance to the Cajón del Morado, Metropolitan Region. |
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On the way to the summit along the ridge of the Lomalarga Mountain.
Metropolitan Region. |
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| Crossing the Cortadera Glacier, Metropolitan Region. |
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| Part of the expedition team. |
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Advancing on the cirque between the summits of the Cajon del Morado,
Metropolitan Region. |
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| Ascent to the Cortadera Mountain, Metropolitan Region. |
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| One of the camps set up during the expedition to the Central Andes. |
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The attraction that mountains hold for people has been a history of
passions, hundreds of years in the writing. Dreams, desire for
adventure, the longing to explore and expand knowledge, connection
with the sacred, personal challenge, the need to go further… There
are many diverse motives, but the same process: men and women
surpassing their limits, doing whatever possible to reach their summits.
For the western world, mountaineering began in 1786 when the
French scientist and aristocrat Horace Benoít de Saussure reached
the long-desired summit of Mont Blanc (4,810 m). This ascent meant
that the reputation of high altitude mountains was de-mystified,
contributing to the growing movement towards explaining and
exploring the world through reason. Because of Saussure, ‘alpinism’
became much more popular as a passion, discipline and a way of
life.
However, in South America, and specifically Chile and the Andean
countries, the history of mountains and their summits was being
written silently from many years earlier. The high summits of the
Andes, so linked to the life and culture of the aboriginal peoples,
were reached about 400 years before the symbolic conquest of
Mont Blanc.
For centuries, the Andes were considered a divine protection by the
peoples who adapted so impressively to living at high altitude and
in adverse conditions. Peoples that, thanks to their ability for
observation and connection with the environment, managed to
understand the secrets of the land and made the Andes their home.
Peoples that knew and respected the high mountains, considering
them to be the source from where their communities came.
Aymaras and Atacameños, or Likán Antai, are among the peoples
that managed to live sustainably and harmonically in the high lands.
But it is the Incan culture that shows the strongest ties with the
mountains, giving them the role of oratories and burial grounds
which would later lead to the discovery of famous mummies, a
testament to the culture they once belonged to.
It is thanks to the expansion of the Incan Empire that today we have
so many vestiges of their culture and so much evidence of their
mountaineering abilities, despite the quality of equipment and clothes
that they had. More than 70 sites classified as high sanctuaries have
been discovered up till the present day. Two in Bolivia, nine in the
south of Peru and the rest distributed equally in Chilean and Argentine
territory. All these sanctuaries are undisputed signs of the veneration
that these aboriginal peoples gave to the Gods through the mountains.
These cultures therefore form the first stage of the history of Andean
mountaineering, known as Pre-Hispanic which was not recreational
but spiritual. It was nevertheless an important precedent of
mountaineering skills and mountain culture that opened up, the
possibility of reaching the highest summits.
A second stage in the formation of what today is Chile’s
mountaineering or Andinismo is the Scientific-Naturalist phase. In
the 19th century there was a period of great scientific development
around the world. Naturalists started to make journeys to remote
places with the aim of expanding human knowledge. In this context,
a large number of foreign scientists came to Chile. They travelled
the country from north to south. This indirectly encouraged the
practice of mountaineering as they were joined in their journeys by
Chilean locals. Famous amongst these were Charles Darwin, who
travelled extensively through Chile and crossed the Andes on several
occasions; the Pole Ignacio Domeyko, who carried out explorations
of the Andes between 1842 and 1873; and Paul Gussfeldt, who
climbed the Maipo Volcano in February 1883 together with two
Chilean huasos.
The third phase of this history, which ran between the end of the
19th century and the beginning of the 20th, is related to Chile’s
resident foreigners and overseas visitors, who introduced the idea
of climbing for sporting objectives. The first ascent of Aconcagua
by the Swiss guide Matthias Zurbriggen was carried out during this
period, on the 14th of January 1897. Similarly, a series of Italian,
Swiss, Polish and German mountaineers came to Chile and made
the first ascents of the classic mountains in the Central Andes.
Amongst these were Albrecht Maas, Hermann Sattler and Sebastian
Kruckel who climbed Marmolejo in 1928; Matthias Zurbriggen and
Stuart Vines, who climbed Tupungato on the 12th of April 1897;
and Fredriech Reichert , Robert Helbling and Damasio Beíza who
reached the summit of Nevado Juncal in 1911.
The event that marks the fourth stage of the development of national
mountaineering was the creation of the first mountain clubs in Chile,
a stage known as Organised Sport. The first clubs in Europe were
started in the 19th century and in Chile the process started to develop
in 1930, when Hermann Sattler founded the German Andean Club
and Chilean Andean Club in 1933.
The birth of more clubs followed in the subsequent years. In 1941,
the Federación de Andinismo y Esquí (Federation of Andinismo and
Skiing) was created, which encouraged, perhaps more than any
other club, the practice of mountaineering in the country. In parallel,
large European expeditions began the first conquests of the 8,000
metre peaks in the Himalayas, the highest mountains in the world.
In 1950 the first 8,000 m mountain, Annapurna, was climbed by a
French expedition. On the 12th of May 1953 it was the turn of the
mythical Mount Everest, climbed by the New Zealander Sir Edmund
Hillary and the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, both members of an English
expedition.
The fifth stage is Modern Mountaineering. At the beginning of the1970s, the famous mountaineers Claudio Lucero and Gastón Oyarzúnstudied in the mountain schools in the USSR, transforming themselvesinto the first mountain instructors in Chile. On their return they madehistory by creating the National Mountain School (ENAM) on the4th of September, 1970, a dependent of the Andean MountaineeringFederation. ENAM was set up to train new climbing instructors andestablish a uniformity in teaching methods for the latestmountaineering techniques. They received funding through thenational lottery, allowing the continued growth of the sport’spopularity.
Finally, the present stage is called Sporting Business in which Chileanmountaineers are helping to develop mountaineering around theworld. Understanding that the Andes are a great school, they startedto make large expeditions abroad that involved considerable logisticaloperations and large sums of money. During this period, thanks tothe great level of skills and abilities reached in national mountaineering,important achievements have followed, including: Gasherbrum II in1979 (8,035 m, Claudio Lucero and Gastón Oyarzún), the conquestof Everest in 1992 by two Chilean expeditions; K2, the second highestmountain in the world, in 1996; Lhotse, the fourth highest mountainin the world, climbed by the largest number of Chilean mountaineersin one expedition, among many other achievements.
In this last stage, out of the 14 highest mountains on the planet,Chileans have climbed nine of them, among which some have beenclimbed more than once, as is the case with Everest, climbed by fourChilean expeditions in total. This shows the excellence of nationalmountaineering, and assures that the story of mountaineering inChile will continue to be written. And written large. |
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