Part 2: Chasing a line on Argentina’s Southern Ice Cap

This is Part II of a two-part series detailing a recent expedition to Argentina by two expert skiers. Thor Retzleff is a badass Vermont-based Renoun athlete, and his travel companion, Matt Tufts, is an award-winning photojournalist who captures incredible moments in nature from remote areas around the world. To catch up, read part I here. 

Out on the ice, time moved in funny ways. Thor and Matt moved quickly to position themselves for a possible break, only to get pinned down while storms hammered their tent.

Patagonian weather has a reputation for a reason: wind, snow, rain, whiteout, often all in the same day. There’s no waiting for “perfect,” because perfect rarely exists out there. Eventually, the team got their window. After all, who needs perfect when you have good enough. 

The east face of this ice cap has lived in Matt’s mind for years, until now only seen through long lenses from over 100 kilometers away. Now they stood beneath it, taking in how massive, steep, and complex it really was. The lower third rose at roughly 60 degrees. The higher pitchers were littered with broken features, wind-loaded corridors, and huge glaciated fall lines.

There was only one way to find out if it would go. They roped up, put on crampons, and started climbing. Wind pushed snow down from above, then sucked it back upward, creating an eerie cycle of accumulation and release. Small sloughs peeled down the face every ten minutes.

They kept testing the snow as they progressed, getting positive feedback. Suddenly, their good tidings shifted. At a critical ramp, a larger loose avalanche ripped through the exact line they would have needed to cross.

In high-consequence terrain, there are moments when the whole day comes down to one decision. Matt and Thor considered what they’d just seen and cross referenced it with their comfort levels, experience, intuition, skillsets, and the terrain in which they existed. Ultimately, they turned around.

“It’s rare you get validation in the mountains,” Matt says. “Usually, you never know if you made the right call. But seeing that avalanche go exactly where we would’ve been…felt like the mountain answered us.”

The team went on to ski the lower third, arcing steep, unforgettable turns down the slope. Thirty minutes later, another avalanche swept through the upper, unskied line. In that moment, their success was in listening to the mountain.

Most of the expedition wasn’t dramatic summit decisions. It was tent life, including wind so strong it broke their shelter twice. Nights boiling drinking water. Long silences. Spindrift racing across the ice.

When weather worsened, they rerouted their entire exit. Instead of staying high, they dropped down, caught another boat, and climbed back to the ice cap from a safer direction.

Once back on flat ice, they could finally move efficiently on their skis with sleds loaded. They covered upwards of 40 kilometers in a day, sometimes in full whiteout. Navigation came from an array of tools: GPS bearings, wind direction, and even watching how snow blew across the topsheets of Thor’s Renoun skis.

They skied for hours listening to Ludovico Einaudi through shared AirPods, the music echoing through wind and white.

Matt and Thor didn’t complete their objective to ski the entire east face. Still, they bore witness to it up close and climbed and descended part of it. Mostly, they learned from it. The next time they attempt it, they’ll go into the expedition that much more prepared.

“That’s what these big lines are,” Matt says. “Puzzles. Every trip you get one more piece.”

Thor puts it simply: “You go out there for the unknown. You learn. You come back better.”

For three years, they’ve trusted the same tools to carry them through: Renoun Endurance skis and lightweight bindings, simple systems that don’t fail when failure isn’t an option.

They’re already planning what comes next.

This article was written with content gathered from a Renoun athlete Q&A session arranged exclusively for RenounPro members. One of the many perks RenounPro members experience is access to our athletes and learning about their incredible ski adventures firsthand. Matt and Thor are excellent storytellers and after sharing details about the expedition, they took questions from members.