Vlad Capusan and Zsolt Török, the two Romanians who managed to climb on the spectacular and difficult peak Cerro Torre in Patagonia – located in southern Argentina (Cordillera Andes) – held a press conference at the DARIAN DRS headquarters on February 12th. The whole expedition, as well as the backstage details, were presented by the two teammates, who experiences situations at the limit.
An almost inaccessible route, with extreme weather and obstacles that almost kneeled them, turned into an indisputable success. Cerro Torre (3,106 meters) – known as one of the toughest peaks in the world as an approach to technical climbing – has turned to reality from a dream.
After months of training and psychological training, Vlad and Zsolt headed for Cerro Torre.
In their ascent, at the beginning of 2018, Vlad and Zsolt have travelled over 85 km and over 3,200 meters of level difference during the 7 days spent on the mountain. The Romanian team, with the Vlad head of the string, was the one who climbed first on the top facilitating, thus, the climbing of the other teams which were present. Without this support, the other teams could not have reached the peak due to weather and depletion.
The toughest sections, Elmo / Head Wall / and the famous ultimate part, have been crossed in a row after a heavy fight that lasted over 8 hours. At this point on the route, the Romanians slept one night under the peak so that they could continue their ascent. The conditions on the route were unexpectedly difficult and the temperatures very low, as they explained. Instead of initiating the descent immediately after they managed to reach the top, the Romanians helped the other teams to climb, showing a fair play worth mentioning.
The ascent to Cerro Torre is a new important page in Romanian climbing. And Vlad and Zsolt have shown that where there is a cumulus of qualities specific to the world’s elite in altitude technical climbing, an objective that seems intangible can be reached, and the impossible can become possible.
The ascent to Cerro Torre peak was first achieved in 1974 (by Italian climber Mario Conti), long after the great explorations and conquests of the Himalayas, which says a lot about the difficulty of this mountain.
Another interesting happening from this expedition is that the Italian team, who managed to reach the peak due to the road open by our team, included Manuele Panzeri, the son of an Italian alpinist from Lecco, a climber who although present in 1974 with Mario Conti failed to reach the top. Then, only 4 members of the Italian team 20 have managed to reach the top because of the lack of resources … But now the son of that climber closes the circle and meets his father’s unfulfilled dream after more than 40 years – with the support of Romanian climbers.

Darian, along with other sponsors made this expedition posible and it represents a big succcess of the romanian alpinism.