Cotopaxi — volcano
Image by tvtommyec from Pixabay

Cotopaxi

Volcán Cotopaxi

  • Elevation5,897 m
  • 2 min read
  • 0.681° S 78.438° W

Interesting facts

  • In H. G. Wells's 1897 short story The Star, Cotopaxi erupts so violently that its lava reaches the Pacific coast within a single day.
  • The NASA tracking station on its slopes, with a staff of about 75, later followed Apollo missions and the Space Shuttle before its equipment moved to Dakar, Senegal.
  • The ash of the first recorded eruption, in 1534, is thought to form a layer found in lake beds of El Cajas National Park in southern Ecuador.
  • The greatest danger is meltwater rather than lava: a sudden melt of the summit glacier could send mudflows down the valleys towards Quito's southern suburbs.
  • In the first four months of the eruption that began in October 2022, Ecuador's Geophysical Institute recorded around 8,000 earthquakes beneath the volcano.
  • During the 2015 unrest the government estimated that some 300,000 people in four provinces lived within reach of the volcano's hazards.
  • The base of the cone is about 23 km wide, and Cotopaxi ranks among the highest active volcanoes on Earth.
  • The American painter Frederic Edwin Church made Cotopaxi the subject of important canvases in 1855 and 1862.
  • A year after the first ascent, the German geologist Alphons Stübel reached the summit in 1873 together with four Ecuadorian companions.
  • On Easter Sunday 1996 an ice avalanche broke from the glacier above the José F. Ribas Refuge, partly burying the hut and killing 13 people on the slope.

Why it is worth it

Cotopaxi is the volcano children would draw: a nearly symmetrical cone rising alone from a high Andean plain at about 3,800 m to 5,897 m, capped with one of the few glaciers on the equator. It stands in Cotopaxi National Park about 50 km south of Quito and is the second-highest summit in Ecuador after Chimborazo. On a clear day it is plainly visible from both Quito and Latacunga. At the top is a crater about 800 by 550 m and 250 m deep, with two concentric rims; the highest point lies on the outer rim to the north, and the ice begins at around 5,000 m.

It is also one of the most active volcanoes in the country, with 87 known eruptions since the first recorded one in 1534. The worst came in 1742, 1744, 1768 and 1877. In the 1877 eruption pyroclastic flows melted the entire ice cap, and mudflows ran more than 100 km to the Pacific and into the Amazon basin; the colonial town of Latacunga was flattened more than once. The 1742 eruption was watched by Pierre Bouguer and Charles-Marie de La Condamine of the French Geodesic Mission. Renewed steam and ash explosions came in 2015, and another eruptive phase began in October 2022. Local Quechua speakers explain the name as "neck of the moon", after the crescent shape of the crater, and the mountain was revered as a rain-giver long before the Inca arrived.

The mountaineering history is almost as rich. Alexander von Humboldt tried and failed in 1802; the German geologist Wilhelm Reiss and the Colombian Angel Escobar reached the summit on 28 November 1872, and Edward Whymper spent a night on top in 1880. The painter Rudolf Reschreiter climbed it in 1903 and painted it again and again. Today the standard route starts from the José F. Ribas Refuge, built in 1971 at 4,864 m; climbers set off around midnight, rope up for the glacier and aim to be on top by early morning, and only about half make it. From 1957 to 1981 the slopes also hosted a NASA satellite tracking station that heard the last signals of Vanguard 1.

Getting there

The nearest town is Machachi, about 24 km from the volcano; Quito lies about 50 km to the north. Cotopaxi International Airport (LTX) at Latacunga is about 32 km away. A 4WD track climbs from the national park entrance to a car park at about 4,600 m on the north side, from where a steep walk of under an hour and a half leads to the Ribas Refuge.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Ecuador 10The Most Beautiful Volcanoes 61The Most Beautiful Mountains 91The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders 580

From the encyclopaedia

Cotopaxi is an active stratovolcano in the Andes Mountains, located in Cotopaxi National Park in Cotopaxi Province, about 50 km (31.1 mi) south of Quito, and 31 km (19 mi) northeast of the city of Latacunga, Ecuador. It is the second highest summit in Ecuador, reaching a height of 5,897 m (19,347 ft). Cotopaxi is among the highest active volcanoes in the world.

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-0.68056, -78.43778per Wikidata