Like our hula-hooping brethren, we'd had an ambitious plan. The longstanding project — a new link-up on Cerro Torre — had shut down better climbers than us, but conditions and timing are everything. According to our big talk, we'd pack ridiculously light — daypacks plus a stove — and punch it.

     The lower "route" has a French name I can't pronounce, but back in 1994 Francois Marsigny and Andy Parkin started from the southeast side and climbed a serac-threatened, ephemeral ice and mixed couloir for 800 vertical meters to the Col of Hope, intersecting where the 1974 West Face route (which starts on the remote icecap side) wraps around. The plan and the prize had been obvious: continue up the remaining 600 meters to the Torre's summit. Hit the summit and you can go over, zip down the Compressor Route, and stroll on back to your bivy, sin problema. Right. Marsigny and Parkin got battered back by storms some 300 meters below the summit and retreated down to the icecap, their to-hell-and-back epic lasting nine long days.

     We wanted to climb Cerro Torre, and the Compressor Route didn't inspire us. Rappel it, though? Sure. Everyone draws his line in the sand, and we didn't care if we rappelled over ours. If we succeeded, neither of us had any intention of renaming anything or even naming our link-up. Every fart, sit start, and variation doesn't need a name. If we could climb Cerro Torre by fair means, that would be enough.

     That was our fantasy, anyway.