This precious mountain was been climb several times just in the last 10 years, only 2.035 meters high. But precious from everywhere you look at it…
A description of the mountain from www.andeshandbook.cl
"Monte Balmaceda.
The Transparent Mountain In spite of its little 2250 m.s.n.m., altitude that in other latitudes would be considered insignificant, this mass of dark rock and bad quality, stuffed of glaciers in frank backward movement, is one of the giants of the Patagonia. Located to the bottom of the Last fiord Hope, the Balmaceda is easily visible, from Puerto Natales as the group of the Paine. To the being an isolated mountain, nothing the hidden one, but has a very complex and confused structure, changing its appearance according to the point from which it is observed and not being able to find the montañista to him an image that can be called classic. It is perhaps the image from the most well-known Puerto Naales, but it is possibly the Vista from the Paine, that is from the north, its more attractive, full face of towers and ice fungi that stimulate the imagination.
Year to year, thousands of tourists visit it when passing by the Mountain river from or towards the Paine, and many even get to walk something by the well-known Mountain glacier, like part of a tourist circuit. It calls enormously the attention that a so visible mountain only has 4 registered ascents. It is as if he was transparent to the eyes of the montañistas, that, overwhelmned by the Paine and its secrets, do not pay attention to the colossus. The difficult access and the much greater attention than receive the Bulk of the Paine have allowed that this area and an enormous region around the Balmaceda remains almost inalteradas. In fact the access, with exception of the slope that it gives towards the Mountain river, he is absolutely complex and slow, because the exuberance of their forests, great zones of pastizales and marshes, intimidates the easy or fast summit finder. Today the Balmaceda is even land only for montañistas with explorer soul.
The great backward movement of its glaciers is remarkable, just like its neighbors of the Patagónico Ice; one short life to the route of Otto Meiling suggests this condition, being in summer complex and technical, or probably much more nonpracticable by the great amount of cracks. But with the spell of the winter, one appears as perhaps it were 50 years ago back. Thus, even it is left a classic patagónica.
The ascents In October and November of 1957 it operated in the zone an expedition of the Andean Club of Bariloche (CAB), that wished to promote the Paine Grande, but this one, in a shameful episode, was forbidden to other montañistas and it was reserved to the expedition of the Italian Guido Monzino. The group of the CAB insisted unfruitfully, in spite of this situation, in trying the Paine, but another group left to the south to a bulk even inescalado. Thus he was like the 8 of November of 1957 the Argentineans Otto Meiling, Iván Arnsek and Carlos Botazzi, plus the Chilean military man assigned Miguel Saavedra, obtained the main or southwestern summit, acceding from the Mountain river. Registry on previous attempts does not exist. In 1988 a Chilean group led by Claudius Gálvez, obtained some smaller summits in the rock towers of bad quality that are around portezuelo of “the Hen”, place baptized thus by the pioneering group. The second ascent came in October of 1993 from hands of Fernando Breeding grounds and santiaguinos Rodrigo Traub, montañistas that, attracted by the spell of the Patagonia, fixed their residence to Port Native. In that same occasion they made the first ascent to the Southeastern summit, slightly smaller. The 31 of May of the 2002, Iñaki San Vicente and Carlos Garci’a, both Spaniards, made the third ascent by a new one via, more direct, than it accedes to the main summit by the southwestern face of the mountain and that it is joined in his superior sections with the route opened in 1957. The 25 of July of the 2005, Ismael Mena, Francisco Urzúa, Nicholas von Gravenitz and Pablo Besser, all Chileans, carried out the fourth ascent of the main summit, being this one, in addition, the first winter one to the mountain. History and toponymy Between 1557 and 1558, the navigator Juan Brickmaker sailed in which it was a frustrated attempt to manage to find the mouth western of the Strait of Magellan.