February 3, 1959,

Chaserino Fava is waiting on the glacier, staring up at the most beautiful mountain in the world, Serotora.

He's waiting for his friends, his heroes, Cheseray Maestri and Tony Eager, to return from the cutting edge of climbing.

They're at the end of the earth, the southern tip of Argentine Patagonia, a place known for the remote peaks that shoot up off the glaciers like sharpened teeth.

It's a place that's also known for hellacious weather and deadly storms.

And one of those storms has been ravaging the mountain for days.

Surviving this would be a miracle.

Among the vanguard, there were all these like whispers and things people had started hearing about this place called Patagonia.

This is Kelly Cordes, Alpinist, journalist, and author of The Tower,

a chronicle of climbing and controversy on Saratora.

He's going to help us tell the story.

So just a few years before, the tallest peak in the Chaltenmassive, Sarah Fitzroy,

it had just been climbed for the first time. But even before, the tallest peak in the Chalten Massive, Cerro Fitzroy, it had just been

climbed for the first time.

But even then, the first ascensionists knew that the biggest prize in climbing lay across

the valley.

And from the summit of Fitzroy, Guido Magnone and Leonel Torre looked across and saw this spire,

Cerro Torre. And they saw it and said, like, now there's a mountain worth risking one skin for.

And Meistery and Eger were risking their skin, because it had been six days and they were seriously overdue.

They do have four people way down below at base camp.

They were university students from Buenos Aires, whom they

hired to help them carry gear into the range. And then Fava was in a snow cave, about 600 feet or so

...