I wanted to add a little context to the part of the world through which we were trekking. So here we have a very short introduction to some of the cool stuff which has been going on down there.

The mountains of Patagonia are the tail end of the Andes. The spine of South America. Stretching 7,000 kilometres through seven countries, before sinking into the Southern Ocean, the Andes hold the tallest mountain in the world, and have been the stage for some exciting chapters of mountaineering history.

Taller than Everest? Bold claim, I know. The Earth isn't a perfect sphere, so the summit of Mt. Chimborazo, near the equator, is actually slightly further from the centre of the planet than the peak of Everest.

A mountain, for anyone confused about what is being discussed here.

It is the Fitzroy Massif, a little to the north of the Torres del Paine, that usually dominates the climbing headlines (and has been made iconic by the logo of a certain outdoor brand). The centre of this group is Fitzroy itself. Its original name was “Chaltel”, or “Chaltén” (translating to “smoking mountain”) in the language of the native Teheulche people. The streamer of cloud spreading from the summit led many to believe the mountain was a volcano.

I got lost down a bit of a clickhole here. Turns out the history of South/Central America is not all Incredible Incas and Angry Aztecs (sorry, big fan of the Horrible Histories books growing up). There have been people living in Chile for some 14,000 years. Long enough for the varied landscapes to not only lead to a rich variety of cultures, but to trigger genetic adaptations. For instance, changes which allowed people to live at high altitude in the Andes. Interestingly, these are different to the adaptations found in other high altitude populations: highland Andeans evolved stronger hearts, whereas native Tibetans, for instance, have genes which affect their blood's ability to transport oxygen. Same problem different solutions. Genetic data like this has helped scientists chart the migration of humans into South America. As well as being an interesting travelogue, Chatwin's In Patagonia gives a depressing insight into how these native populations fared following the arrival of Europeans

Chaltel was renamed, in classic colonial style, Fitzroy after Captain Robert Fitzroy of the Beagle. On his infamous voyage in the 1830's (with Charles Darwin as his passenger), Fitzroy mapped much of the coast line of Patagonia. The two even travelled far enough inland to see the peaks of these mountains in the distance. Check out 'Cerro Fitz Roy' on PataClimb for a neat history of this early period of the European exploration in the range.

It wasn't until 1952 that the mountain was first climbed, by the French alpinists Lionel Terray and Guido Magnone. More recently, Jim Reynolds, a member of Yosemite Search and Rescue, free soloed his way both up and down the mountain in an incredible fifteen and a half hour push. Tommy Caldwell and Alex Honnold also had their own sufferfest when they became the first people to climb the entire Fitzroy traverse.

Elsewhere in the range, Cerro Torre, a granite spire described by Reinhold Messner as a “shriek turned to stone”, has been a centre of climbing controversy for over half a century. Casare Maestri, an Italian climber, first claimed to have summited the mountain in 1959 along with his climbing partner Toni Egger, who died during the attempt. This claim attracted scrutiny from the off. Ed Douglas' The Magicians Glass, has an interesting essay on the mysteries surrounding climb and the death of Egger.

Affronted by the scepticism, Maestri returned in 1970 with a gas-powered air compressor and drill. He, and his team, drilled hundreds of bolts into the rock face, essentially creating a ladder up the mountain, a route which became known as the Compressor Route. They still stopped a hundred feet short of the summit, yet claimed the second ascent.

The controversy did not end there. In 2011, two American climbers, Hayden Kennedy and Jason Kruk, removed 125 of Maestri's bolts, effectively wiping out the Compressor Route. The arguments about the ethics of all this are far more than I want to get bogged down in here, so check out author/mountaineer Mark Horrell's blog instead. For anyone interested, Kelly Cordes’ book, The Tower, is the definitive history of the mountain.

Fitzroy and Cerro Torre are just two mountains out of many thousands, but, I hope I've gone a small way towards showing that, whilst perhaps not as headline grabbing as Himalayan exploits on the 8,000 metre peaks, there's a whole lot of interesting stuff happening in the high places of South America. There’s so much more that could be said about mountaineering in this part of the world, I’ve not even touched on the epic that is Joe Simpson’s Touching the Void, but I’m afraid you’ll have to discover that, and the rest, for yourself.

Links/books and so on (in no particular order)

Ed Douglas, The Magicians Glass: Character and Fate: eight essays on climbing and the mountain life, specifically the chapter entitled 'Stealing Toni Egger'

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website: 'What is the Highest Point on Earth as Measured from the Earth's Centre?'

Kelly Cordes, The Tower: A Chronicle of Climbing and Controversy on Cerro Torre

Joe Simpson, Touching the Void, also made into a docudrama (less cheesy than it sounds) this is one I've been meaning to read for years and have finally gotten round to, the definition of an epic.

Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia.

Mark Horrell's blog post, 'A short history of Cerro Torre, the world's most controversial mountain'

UKC website: 'Alex Honnold on the Fitzroy Traverse, Interview'

PataClimb website: 'Cerro Fitz Roy' - well researched with footnotes and a shortbibliography

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences website: 'Genetic signatures of high-altitude adaptations in Tibetans'

EcoCamp website: 'Looking Back at Patagonia's History'

National Geographic online articles:

'Tracking the First Americans' (also in the January 2015 NatGeo magazine)

'Ancient DNA Reveals Complex Migrations of Early Americans'

'Exclusive: This climber just pulled of the biggest free solo of the year (and he's not Alex Honnold)'