Daughters scale mountain to retrieve photos, bag and pickaxe of legendary dad who died on peak 40 years ago | Global News Avenue

The two daughters of a legendary Argentine climber died 40 years ago on the icy peaks and have retrieved his backpack from the scene – found the camera movie inside, which gives them a glimpse of some of his final experiences.

Guillermo Vieiro died in 1985 when he landed at the Tupungato Lava Dome in Argentina, at the age of 44, one of the highest peaks in the Americas.

Then, last year, his backpack was spotted on the slope by climber Gabriela Cavallaro, who checked it and contacted Vieiro’s daughter Guadalupe, 40 and 44-year-old Azul.

In February, the trio took an 11-day trip with four other guides and two film producers to recover the bag from a height of about 6,100 meters (20,000 feet) – near the summit of the 6,600-meter volcanic peak.

“In my family, the word ‘mountain’ is always forbidden. My mother doesn’t want to have nothing to do with the discovery of this backpack. It’s a family that is broken by grief,” said Azul, who was only four years old when his father died, told AFP.

“It all seemed crazy to me, and I didn’t want to go back to the volcano where he died. But as the months passed… I started to relax and began to think: ‘Why not?'”

Inside the backpack, the woman found a coat, a sleeping bag, a water bottle, aspirin, vitamin C tablets, a set of knifes and two volumes of movies belonging to her father.

“Mentally it feels like a greeting, like, ‘I’m still here, I exist. You’re not alone.’” Azur said.

“That slope has never been scaled again”

The experience also allowed her to learn more about a man she had never had the chance to meet.

“My mother never really told us who we were. We knew he had passed away on the mountain, he was a climber, but not just that.

Photos from other films found in the same backpack a year ago show Vieiro and his partner Leonardo Rabal are the 20-year-old climbers, the first to reach the top of Tupungato from its east side, the most challenging route.

“That slope is never scaled again,” Cavallaro, who lives at the foot of the city of Tupungato, the same name, told AFP.

She added: “They (Vieiro and Rabal) have real historical value in Argentina and international mountaineering.”

according to Smithsonian InstitutionTupungato is a Pleistocene Stratovolcano that covers a lava dome complex of about 80,000 years. According to an outbreak that has not been reported in modern history. Andean geologywhich points out that some parts of the mountain may have “landslides and industry collapse events.”

Vieiro and Rabal’s bodies were found shortly after their death.

Azul and her sister said they will donate their father’s property to try to share “Argentina’s mountaineering history” with others.

The journey to retrieve Vero’s property was only a few months after another late climber’s property was found in a peak in South America. The body preserved by American climber Bill Stampfl last summer – disappeared 22 years ago while scaling snow peaks on Peru’s snowy mountains – Discovered By climbers. one Small hip bag Contains Stampfl’s driver’s license, a pair of sunglasses, a camera, a dubbing recorder and two breakdowns of $20. The gold wedding ring is still in the left hand.