Management of Extreme Situations

17Radical Change in an Extreme Context: Mountaineers Conquering the Darwin Cordillera in Patagonia

17.1. Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to present the analysis of a specific episode of the Darwin mountaineering expedition in Patagonia. As part of a project by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (French national research agency)¹, we conducted a longitudinal case study combined with an in situ and real-time ethnographic study of this expedition.

The study of the episode that is the subject of this chapter was carried out in close collaboration with linguists Caroline Mellet, Frédérique Sitri and Sarah de Vogüé, as well as Linda Rouleau and Gilda Simoni. In this extreme context of an expedition to one of the last unexplored territories on the planet, the analysis of this episode sheds light on the process of radical discussion and reconfiguration of the project and can help us understand why it is so difficult, even though the performance or survival of a team is at stake, to abandon its tools, plans, frameworks and implement a radical change.

The objective of the Darwin expedition was to carry out in six weeks the world-first crossing of a virtually unexplored mountain range, the Cordillera Darwin. This mountain range, about 150 km long, is located on the large island of Tierra del Fuego, in the extreme south of Chilean Patagonia, near Cape Horn. This is an extremely hostile, risky and uncertain environment. There is no precise map or GPS data, glaciers are bristling ...