Cerro Torre

Cerro Torre is a slender granite spire rising to about 3,128 meters in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field on the border of Argentina and Chile, part of the same granite batholith, intruded and cooled deep underground over the last several million years, that also produced the nearby Fitz Roy massif. Its extremely steep, narrow form is the product of intense glacial erosion: surrounding softer rock and less resistant portions of the granite mass were stripped away by the ice field's glaciers, while the hardest, most resistant granite core was carved into an almost vertical needle, further sharpened by the region's severe wind, ice and precipitation. Frequently capped by a mushroom-like formation of rime ice built up by Patagonia's ferocious winds, Cerro Torre is regarded as one of the most technically demanding and visually striking granite spires on Earth.