THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

Cerro Torre is the most dangerous, the most difficult and ecstatic mountain on Earth.  There really is nothing like it anywhere.  It is more a symbolic image of deadly fear than a mere mountain.   It is a 3,300-metre-high needle of basalt sticking straight up into the sky and for years was considered unclimbable. The first verified ascent was somewhere in the mid-1970s.  I think about 200 times more people have succeeded in climbing Mount Everest as have ever made it to the top of Cerro Torre.  You can only truly understand why it strikes so much fear into climbers when you see it standing before you.  There may be higher peaks to scale but what make Cerro Torre particularly difficult are the sheer cliff faces and weather conditions. Most of the time there is a pandemonium of storms, and you cannot see the peak.  I call them storms, but actually we do not have an equivalent in our language to describe this phenomenon.

Herzog/Cronin