Fitz Roy, one of the many beautiful peaks in the southern Patagonian Andes, is an impressive mountain with an altitude of 3.128m. It is the most widely visible peak of the surrounding Cordillera and its unique shape can be seen from more than a 100 kilometers away. Fitz Roy’s vertical walls have been attracting adventurers and climbers ever since its discovery. In the early days getting close to the mountain was and adventure itself. Nowadays El Chaltén, a small and friendly town from where you can trek to the foot of Fitz Roy within a few hours, serves as a comfortable hub for tourists and climbers.

The first written description of Fitz Roy was made in the year 1782, by spanish explorer Antonio de Viedma, who spotted the mountain from the shores of a lake nearby later called Lago Viedma. Antonio de Viedma was not the first human to lay his eyes on the peak though. Southern Patagonia and the vast plains east of Fitz Roy had been inhabitat by the native nomad tribes of the Aonikenk (or Tehuelche) for centuries. The native name for Fitz Roy – a sacred mountain in the spiritual world of the Aonikenk – was “Chaltén” which translates to “smoking mountain”, and obviously was a reference to the clouds often hovering above the peak. In 1877 Francisco “Perito” Moreno, the famous explorer and geographer, named the mountain after Robert FitzRoy the captain of the HMS Beagle the ship that Charles Darwin used for his famous exploratio of the world.

Fitz Roy is located in Parque Nacional los Glaciares in Patagonia where it stands among other famous patagonian peaks like Cerro Torre. The peak is the most prominent of the so called Fitz Roy Group, a chain of summits connected via a ridge line. Other notable peaks of the Fitz Roy Group are (from South to North) Aguja Saint-Exupéry, Aguja Poincenot, Aguja Mermoz and Aguja Guillaumet. Fitz Roy’s impressive east face can be seen from almost anywhere in the national park and many tourists make it up all the way to Laguna de los Tres, a small lake almost directly below Fitz Roy’s walls. Seeing Fitz Roy’s West face is a privilege reserved to the more experienced and adventurous, venturing it deeper into the park.