Sunrise view of Mount Fitz Roy (3405 m or 11,171 ft elevation) and Aguja Guillaumet (left) from Refugio Piedra del Fraile. We hiked the scenic Rio Electrico Valley to Refugio Piedra del Fraile ("Stone of the Friar", 14.5 km round trip) and slept overnight in a basic 4-person dorm room using our sleeping bags carried to use on their pads. Monte Fitz Roy is also known as Cerro Chaltén, Cerro Fitz Roy, or Mount Fitz Roy. The first Europeans recorded as seeing Mount Fitz Roy were the Spanish explorer Antonio de Viedma and his companions, who in 1783 reached the shores of Viedma Lake. In 1877, Argentine explorer Francisco Moreno saw the mountain and named it Fitz Roy in honour of Robert FitzRoy who, as captain of HMS Beagle, had travelled up the Santa Cruz River in 1834 and charted large parts of the Patagonian coast. Mt Fitz Roy was first climbed in 1952. Cerro is a Spanish word meaning hill, while Chaltén comes from a Tehuelche word meaning "smoking mountain", due to clouds that usually form around the peak.
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