The daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who tragically died 40 years ago have recovered his backpack from the peak of Tupungato, finding precious film inside that offered a glimpse of his final moments.
Guillermo Vieiro, who was 44 when he died in 1985 while descending the towering Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas, left behind his backpack at the site. The discovery came last year when mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro spotted the bag on a slope and contacted Vieiro’s daughters, Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44.
In February of this year, the trio, along with guides and filmmakers, embarked on a challenging 11-day expedition to retrieve the bag from an altitude of approximately 6,100 meters (20,000 feet), close to the summit of the 6,600-meter peak.
For Azul, the journey was a daunting emotional one. “In my family, the word ‘mountain’ was always forbidden. My mother wants nothing to do with the discovery of this backpack. It’s a family that has been broken by grief,” she shared with AFP. Azul was just four years old when her father died, and returning to the volcano felt surreal, but eventually, she embraced the idea of rediscovering his story.
Inside the backpack, they found a jacket, sleeping bag, water bottle, aspirin, Vitamin C tablets, a set of knives, and two rolls of film. “Spiritually, it felt like a greeting, like: ‘I’m still here, I exist. You’re not alone,'” Azul recalled.
The photos developed from the film revealed that Vieiro and his climbing partner, Leonardo Rabal, were the first to scale Tupungato’s eastern face—a route that has never been attempted since. Cavallaro, who lives near the base of Tupungato, praised their historic achievement, calling it real historical value in Argentine and international mountaineering.
Vieiro and Rabal’s bodies were recovered shortly after their deaths, but the backpack and the photographs have now allowed their legacy to be shared anew. Azul and Guadalupe have decided to donate their father’s belongings to preserve a “piece of Argentine mountaineering history.”
