Since reading Yvon Chouinard’s epic “Climbing Fitz Roy,” BD Employee Sasha Yakunin had dreamt of one day climbing that mountain. “A dream is like a virus,” he explains. “Resilient and highly contagious. Even the smallest seed of a dream can grow. It can grow to define you …” Recently, Sasha took a vacation and travelled to Patagonia to finally see for himself if the Fitz Roy of his dreams was everything he had imagined.
It’s 7:30 in the morning and after two hours of approach from La Brecha to the bottom of Fitz Roy’s south wall we feel perfectly warmed up. While racking I keep going over Californian route topo in my mind, trying to focus. A long day is waiting ahead, maybe even two. It’s time to be fast, and it’s time to go. Now. And at that exact moment my fists start jamming into the crack of the first pitch, a small involuntary smile stretches across my face and electricity shoots through my veins. It’s been a long way to this moment and it’s finally happening!
