The Highest Mountain in the Western Hemisphere
Sean | March 4, 2009Today I took a 10 hour driving tour (in Spanish) to see Cerro Aconcagua and the ‘Christ the Redeemer of the Andes’ statue.
A valley not dissimilar to the Western parts of the Yosemite valley takes you West of Mendoza to view Aconcagua. This mountain is HUGE… 6,962m or 22,841 ft. We viewed it from a vista at about 2900m and probably a dozen kilometers away.
If you look just at the lower peak, the large ice shelf is about 300m thick.
Then we drove up a very windy gravel road to just under 4000m to the ‘Christ the Redeemer of the Andes’ statue. The statue was raised in 1904 on the Border after a treaty between Chile and Argentina regarding where the actual border is…
I had a hot chocolate served by the happy staff.
On the way back we stopped by an Inca mineral mine where sulfur leaches out old volcanic pools. I’d hate to be the guy who had to haul Sulfur back to Cuzco…
There was a market with tons of geode’s and volcanic minerals along with Inca-like clothing, but my favorite crowd shot of the day was a guy doing the thinking man pose…
Finally, the full color of the mountains was exposed on the way back to Mendoza…
Red, Green, Orange, Brown, and a blue sky all in one pic…
And all in one mountain…
And a neat erosion pattern…
The guy who owns the hostel also runs a paragliding company… so guess what I’m doing tomorrow?!?!?!
