Two daughters of a legendary Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years in the past, have retrieved his backpack from the spot — discovering digital camera movie inside that allowed them a glimpse of a few of his ultimate experiences.
Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 whereas descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of many highest peaks within the Americas.
Then final 12 months, his backpack was noticed on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44.
ANDRES LARROVERE/AFP by way of Getty Photos
In February this 12 months, the three set out with 4 different guides and two filmmakers on an 11-day journey to get better the bag from an altitude of about 6,100 meters (20,000 ft) — near the summit of the 6,600-meter volcanic peak.
“In my household, the phrase ‘mountain’ was at all times forbidden. My mom needs nothing to do with the invention of this backpack. It is a household that has been damaged by grief, by the void,” Azul, who was simply 4 years outdated when her father died, instructed AFP.
“All of it appeared loopy to me, and I did not wish to return to the volcano the place he had died. However because the months glided by… I began to loosen up, and commenced pondering: ‘Why not?'”
Contained in the backpack, the ladies discovered a jacket, a sleeping bag, a water bottle, aspirin, Vitamin C tablets, a set of knives and two rolls of movie that had belonged to their father.
ANDRES LARROVERE/AFP by way of Getty Photos
“Spiritually, it felt like a greeting, like: ‘I am nonetheless right here, I exist. You are not alone,'” Azul recounted.
“That slope has by no means been scaled once more”
The expertise additionally allowed her to be taught extra a few man she by no means obtained an opportunity to know.
“My mom by no means actually instructed us who he was. We knew he had died within the mountains and that he was a mountaineer, however not way more than that. So, it was like rediscovering his story, like saying, wait… we’ve a father who had a life, a historical past. So it was like discovering him another time.”
Photographs taken from different movie discovered inside the identical backpack by Cavallaro a 12 months earlier, confirmed that Vieiro and his accomplice Leonardo Rabal, 20, had been the primary climbers to achieve the highest of Tupungato from its jap facet — essentially the most difficult route.
“That slope has by no means been scaled once more,” Cavallaro, who lives on the foot of Tupungato within the metropolis of the identical title, instructed AFP.
“What they (Vieiro and Rabal) completed has actual historic worth in Argentine and worldwide mountaineering,” she added.
Based on the Smithsonian Establishment, Tupungato is a Pleistocene stratovolcano capped by a lava dome advanced that’s about 800,000 years outdated. There have been no reported eruptions there in trendy historical past, in response to Andean Geology, which famous that “landslide and sector collapse occasions are seemingly” on sure components of the mountain.
The our bodies of Vieiro and Rabal have been recovered shortly after they died.
Azul and her sister stated they’d donate their father’s belongings in an try and share a “piece of Argentine mountaineering historical past” with others.
ANDRES LARROVERE/AFP by way of Getty Photos
The journey to retrieve Vieiro’s belongings come simply months after one other deceased climber’s possessions have been discovered on a peak in South America. Final summer season, the preserved physique of American mountaineer Invoice Stampfl — who disappeared 22 years in the past whereas scaling a snowy peak in Peru — was discovered by a climber. A hip pouch contained Stampfl’s driving license, a pair of sun shades, a digital camera, a voice recorder and two decomposing $20 payments. A gold wedding ceremony ring was nonetheless on the left hand.
