Interview with Nicolas Favresse after the first free ascent, carried out with fellow-Belgians Sean Villanueva O’Driscoll and Siebe Vanhee, of the big wall rock climb El Regalo de Mwono (1200m, 8a) located on the East Face of the Central Tower of Paine, Patagonia.
How long did you have this route in mind?
When we climbed the South African route in 2009 I was struck by this line. It’s mainly just one thin crack system that runs straight up from the bottom to the top of the Central Tower. It’s thin, but so obvious. So I thought: “Wow, if that goes free it would be so amazing!… And if it doesn’t, for sure it looks like there are some really cool pitches to free climb on it.” So the initial thought was that it would be impossible to free this line, but if there was a small chance, it would certainly be worth double checking 😉 We were mentally ready to “fail” at free climbing it and that opened our mind for anything to happen.
Read the full interview on rockandice.com
IMAGE: Siebe Vanhee, Sean Villanueva and Nicolas Favresse celebrate on the summit of Central Tower of Paine in Patagonia, after having climbed ‘El Regalo de Mwono’ up the mountain’s East Face.
Photo by archive Favresse
