SAMAYA x MÉLISSA LE NEVÉ
CHALLENGING ROUTES AND FIRST SUMMITS IN PATAGONIA
For 3 months, Mélissa Le Nevé, a professional climber with a passion for challenging routes, travelled to South America with the aim of climbing huge walls several hundred meters high. Plunged into the heart of local communities, Mélissa gave her adventure an extra dimension, touched by the issues at stake in the region.
"The first part of this three-month trip took place in Cochamó, in the Chilean Patagonia, an absolutely heavenly region next to Puerto Montt in Chile. The first time I went to Chile, I met the Chilean community who had told me about this place. Climbing friends from Europe and North America had described it to me as the second Yosemite. I wanted to go there more and more, especially as I had taken up traditional climbing.
I quickly got in touch with the local community and in particular with Diego Diaz, a local player and reference person in Cochamó, working for the preservation of this endangered area.
Hacienda Puchegüín, the "Yosemite of South America", renowned for its granite walls and unspoilt nature, is privately owned over 130,000 hectares and is currently for sale. This land abounds in resources and forms an exceptional water reserve, making it the lungs of southern South America. Unlike the vast protected areas that surround it, Puchegüín lacks environmental protection, exposing its ecosystems and communities to the threat of environmental disrespect and non-conservation. To combat a purchase of the area that would jeopardize the fate of the communities living there, an alliance led by local NGO Puelo Patagonia has been formed, in partnership with The Nature Conservancy, the Freyja Foundation and the Wyss Foundation. Diego's sponsor, the Patagonia Foundation, has also joined forces to give the project an international dimension.
When Diego and I met, we were very excited at the idea of doing a big, difficult route together, rated 8b and rising 800 meters high. When we got there, we realized that all the pitons and pads were rusty. In the 2000s, many mountaineers and climbers visiting El Chaltén discovered this place and were overwhelmed by the number of 900-meter-high faces. They set about gradually equipping the routes, which is very nice and honorable, but the problem is that they were there in the dry season and didn't realize that ten months out of twelve, it rains. The walls turn into huge 900-metre waterfalls and the equipment attached to them rusts, leaving these basuras, real garbage, in the middle of the cliffs.
Having originally set out to climb beautiful routes, I ended up trying to act as an international sounding board for these local issues.
After leaving Cochamó, I headed to Bariloche in Argentina with a local friend nicknamed la Hormiga, one of the first women to push mountaineering in Argentina. She's an incredible, impressive little person, well known in South America for having climbed Fitz Roy and other superb routes in El Chaltén ten years ago.
The climbing was great there, it's an appetizer of what you can find in El Chaltén. It was really great to get to know the mountains in this way, because I don't have much mountaineering experience, and it helped me to learn bit by bit. I did my first summits at El Chaltén, even though the weather was a bit harsh that season. There were very few good slots and we spent about a month and a half waiting in the village with no good window. Finally, there was a window that allowed us to make a small summit.
Then I went flying with my paraglider. Ever since Fabian Buhl's legendary take-offs from the summits of Cerro Torre in 2020, the Argentine community has been getting into it, and more and more paragliders are decorating the Patagonian skies. I walked for 3h30 to reach my take-off point. Usually, to do any mountain activity in Patagonia, you have to walk for 6 hours. For my paragliding flight, I felt like I'd arrived as soon as I'd set off! I took off from the foot of the Aiguille Poincenot, flying over the entire Fitz Roy range, crossing the glacier in the air. I spent two incredible hours flying across this immense glacier and playing with the condors. It must have been one of the most beautiful flights of my life."
