MATTHEW TANGEMAN PHOTO
A brief and beautiful sunrise on the Torres del Paine. ‘Paine’ is a Tehuelche word for the blue sky - Towers of the Blue Sky. Torre Central de Paine, just right of center, is one of the great walls of Patagonia climbing, three hundred meters taller than El Capitan in Yosemite. At the time of this photo, a Chilean team was on the wall and an American team was in the middle of a 30-day push to establish a new route. An incoming storm wrapped the peaks in clouds and ice minutes later.
MARCH 2026 - PATAGONIA DISPATCH
Hello from 51 degrees south, sitting outside the Holaste Cafe in the oceanside town of Puerto Natales, Chile; just south of Torres del Paine and the continental icefield, and north of the Straight of Magellan and the Drake Passage and it’s 100 mph winds and 100-foot swells.
Puerto Natales is anything from the 5th to 7th southernmost town in the world, depending on your metric. You can charter a plane to Antarctica here. Southern Patagonia can be a pretty intense place to be, but the Holaste Cafe is not. They proudly display a plaque awarding them the title of Chile’s best coffee, and I’m inclined to agree. They are also a proud wifi and laptop-free zone, so that’s why I’m sitting here, outside in the wind, wondering if it might rain; but I’m energized and caffeinated regardless. I wish there were more screen and internet-free places out there.
I just filmed a very exciting project with a powerhouse duo of climbers and alongside fellow photographer and frequent co-conspirator Felipe Tapia-Nordenflycht. American Tommy Caldwell and Belgian Siebe Vanhee climbed the South African route on the east face of Torre Central de Paine in a 24-hour push, a potentially paradigm shifting ascent in Patagonia.
This news just broke. Eventually there will be a film and surely endless content to share, but for now - I’ll link to Siebe’s write-up in Climbing Magazine, where he does an excellent job of breaking down the difficulty of this ambitious project.
Now that I’ve gotten this typed out, I’m closing up this laptop for at least the next week. Take some time to do the same if you can. It feels great.
Down days. Though it’s easy to get caught up in photos of the sky-piercing summits here in Patagonia, the reality is that the weather keeps you out of the mountains for all but a few days a month. Siebe Vanhee stays fit on a backyard wall in Puerto Natales.
OUTLIER: COMMON at Durango Independent Film Festival
Vanessa Chavarriaga Posada and Dani Reyes-Acosta scouting lines in Grand Teton National Park. Photo by Carly Finke.
"What happens if we survive all this chaos?”
OUTLIER: Common follows three women chasing summit perfection. On an emotional journey through North American mountain ranges, a scientist, a filmmaker, and a disruptor share the deeply personal, turbulent stories of their lives—while pushing toward the summits that define them.
Directed and produced by Dani Reyes-Acosta - athlete, filmmaker, strategist, community builder and dear friend whose praises I cannot sing enough - OUTLIER: COMMON is a ski & snowboard documentary that I am proud to have contributed to as an aerial cinematographer.
OUTLIER: COMMON has been on tour since the world premiere at No Man's Land Film Festival in March 2025, stopping at Telluride Mountainfilm, Banff Mountain Film Festival, the Wild & Scenic Film Festival and many more.
The film will be screening at the Durango Independent Film Festival at 7:00 PM on Wednesday, March 4, and at 9:30 AM Saturday, March 7, both at the Gaslight Theater alongside many other incredible films.
If you miss it in Durango, you might have to travel - the next screening will be at the Trento Mountain Film Festival in Trento, Italy - the oldest mountain film festival in the world.
WATCH THE TRAILER.
Los Cuernos del Paine. Any other geology nerds like me out there? If so, you’ll love what’s going on here - contact zone sedimentary rocks overlaying the cooled magma chamber of granite, creating a beautiful layering effect. Granite batholiths building craggy peaks are common, but rarely does the softer rock they uplift remain intact. Torres del Paine National Park, a world biosphere reserve, is one of the most geologically and ecologically fascinating places I’ve been.
RECENT ADVENTURES.
SAIAD!
Siebe Vanhee and Tommy Caldwell approaching the Torres del Paine.
The South African Route, free, in a day.
At over 1,200 meters in verticality and even more in actual distance of climbing, the East Face of Torre Central is among the biggest granite walls in the world. Teams regularly spend weeks or months on the wall. To climb it free in a single day - both climbers climbing every pitch without falling or weighting the rope or pulling on gear, not to be confused with free solo for the non-climbers reading this - is audacious indeed, but that’s what Tommy and Siebe pulled off and what Felipe and I had the incredible opportunity to document.
Prior to the SAIAD, there had only been two free ascents of the route, and they had taken 9-13 days. This is also the first time the east face of Torre Central has been climbed in a day in any style, and the first time in alpine style (no fixed ropes, no stashed gear, no portaledges).
If this all seems overly full of jargon and ridiculously complex qualifiers, it’s because it is. Big wall climbing and alpinism are both full of such things, and rarely do climbs of this magnitude not have a lot of asterisks attached. The lack of asterisks is what makes this one spectacular. They started from the bottom, they climbed to the top using only their hands and feet, they rappelled back down. And did it all quickly. Pure, clean, simple.
This is the biggest wall Tommy has ever climbed, which is really saying something for a man of his talents. He also described this mission as being the most strategically and logistically complex Patagonia climb he has ever done, and, again, he did the first ascent of the Fitz Traverse.
With clouds swirling below, Tommy takes a moment to breathe and nest gear on one of the cruxes of the South African route - pitch 14, the enduro corner. Siebe at the belay.
As a documentarian, I also found this project intense and demanding. I missed their first proper attempt when a power outage at Denver International Airport caused me to get stuck in the subway (wow, a new way to miss a flight!). With short weather windows, multiple teams on the wall, and other factors, we weren’t able to rig and fix ropes to the degree necessary to really capture every moment on the climb, like we would in say, Yosemite. But so it goes. In Patagonia you don’t have the liberty of taking your time to get everything fine-tuned and set up perfectly, when the mountains tell you it’s go time you have to go and do the best you can with what you have. That’s what we did, in the relatively light-and-fast, run-and-gun style we do best.
I’m in the midst now of reflecting on it all and analyzing what could’ve been done differently or better - there’s always something, and such is a necessary part of the creative process for me after any project. One thing for sure is that I’m incredibly proud of the whole team and what we accomplished, it’ll make for a great film. I can’t wait until I can share more.
More photos and a breakdown of the whole thing at the link below. And yeah - they did spell both mine and Felipe’s names wrong. Oh well. It’s not the first time and won’t be the last!
“This is what we’re here for!”