Pasochoa, Ecuador
I went to Ecuador to climb mountains.
After a lovely two days of recovery in the thermal springs of Papallacta, Lily and I began our mountain-climbing tour. We summited three peaks in the central Ecuadorian Andes: Pasochoa, Ruminahui, and Iliniza Norte. Today I'd like to share our experiences climbing the first (and shortest) of those, the peak called Pasochoa. Here it is from the rough road we drove in on:
From a Google Maps perspective, here's the physiography of the surrounding area. Pasochoa is the highest peak of the central volcano in this view:
Once we started hiking, we got above the trees and into the paramo ecosystem, a high-elevation grassland biome that exists between treeline and the bare rocks above where only lichens survive. Another view of the peak, which is about 13,700 feet in elevation:
Once we got up a little bit, we could look down to the Valle de los Chillos, a massive valley between Andean peaks, south of Quito:
One of the most spectacular things that happened on this hike is we saw an Andean condor, which flew by between us and this view, quite spectacularly. We weren't able to get the camera out in time to capture it, but with its black and white plumage, it was unmistakeable. Here's a amateurish Photoshop to show what it kind of looked like:
I pointed out the volcanic breccia to Lily and our guide, Diego:
More of the same could be seen in eroded-out minarets on the flanks of the mountain:
Pasochoa is one tall bit along the rim of a much larger caldera, and when we got up to the edge of that caldera, we got a real sense of its sudden drop-off. Clouds/fog curled up and over the lip, obscuring the view, but we could peer down into them and see that the land dropped steeply away for many hundreds of feet.
Lily gives a sense of scale to the edge of the caldera:
After lunch on top, more clouds moved in, and we decided to decamp back to the vehicle. Here's Diego and I descending the trail towards lower elevations.
Being a guy who had just recently recovered from something akin to pneumonia, I felt pretty good about making the summit of a 13,700' peak. Next up: let's see if we can't find something a little bit taller...
After a lovely two days of recovery in the thermal springs of Papallacta, Lily and I began our mountain-climbing tour. We summited three peaks in the central Ecuadorian Andes: Pasochoa, Ruminahui, and Iliniza Norte. Today I'd like to share our experiences climbing the first (and shortest) of those, the peak called Pasochoa. Here it is from the rough road we drove in on:
From a Google Maps perspective, here's the physiography of the surrounding area. Pasochoa is the highest peak of the central volcano in this view:
Once we started hiking, we got above the trees and into the paramo ecosystem, a high-elevation grassland biome that exists between treeline and the bare rocks above where only lichens survive. Another view of the peak, which is about 13,700 feet in elevation:
Once we got up a little bit, we could look down to the Valle de los Chillos, a massive valley between Andean peaks, south of Quito:
One of the most spectacular things that happened on this hike is we saw an Andean condor, which flew by between us and this view, quite spectacularly. We weren't able to get the camera out in time to capture it, but with its black and white plumage, it was unmistakeable. Here's a amateurish Photoshop to show what it kind of looked like:
I pointed out the volcanic breccia to Lily and our guide, Diego:
More of the same could be seen in eroded-out minarets on the flanks of the mountain:
Pasochoa is one tall bit along the rim of a much larger caldera, and when we got up to the edge of that caldera, we got a real sense of its sudden drop-off. Clouds/fog curled up and over the lip, obscuring the view, but we could peer down into them and see that the land dropped steeply away for many hundreds of feet.
Lily gives a sense of scale to the edge of the caldera:
After lunch on top, more clouds moved in, and we decided to decamp back to the vehicle. Here's Diego and I descending the trail towards lower elevations.
Being a guy who had just recently recovered from something akin to pneumonia, I felt pretty good about making the summit of a 13,700' peak. Next up: let's see if we can't find something a little bit taller...
Labels: birdies, ecuador, mountains, south america, travel, volcano
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