“Kennedy’s most famous achievement in alpinism, however, came on one of the sport’s most infamous routes, the Compressor, on Patagonia’s Cerro Torre. The line, which runs straight up a mile-high granite tower, had been a source of controversy since 1970, when Italian Cesare Maestri hauled, via a rope system, a 200-pound gas-powered compressor up it (thus the name). Along the way, he jackhammered in more than 400 bolts that made the peak, which only Maestri had claimed to have climbed at that point, far easier. Plenty of alpinists saw the Compressor as a sad scar on one of the world’s most difficult and iconic summits and had discussed cutting off the hardware. Once, a threat to do so nearly erupted in a fistfight with Cerro Torre’s professional guides. In 2012, Kennedy and Canadian Jason Kruk climbed the Compressor with minimal use of bolts, and, while on the summit, decided to take action. They removed more than 100 pieces of hardware as they rappelled down. “They essentially restored Cerro Torre to its proper place as one of the world’s most inaccessible summits,” says Matt Samet, the current editor of Climbing, “and they reasserted what alpinism should be: fair means and respect for the objective.””
