Mérida cable car
Teleférico de Mérida
Interesting facts
- The idea came in 1952 from a group of Venezuelan mountaineers, the Club Andino Venezolano, who wanted an easier way up into the Sierra Nevada.
- Before passengers rode it, a goods cableway reached La Aguada in November 1957 to haul up materials for building the upper stations.
- The original line cost about 70 million bolívars, then roughly 16 million US dollars, and the works were directed by the French engineer Maurice Comte.
- In 2008 inspections found the original cables close to their 50-year limit and a crack in one tower, and the old system was retired for good.
- The rebuilt system, officially named Mukumbarí, an indigenous word said to mean place where the sun sleeps, cost more than 106 million euros.
- The route is really four separate cableways in a row, driven by motors housed at the La Montaña and Loma Redonda stations.
- The cabins travel at about 5 metres per second, climbing from cloud forest through the high páramo to bare rock and seasonal snow.
- From the summit terminal on Pico Espejo the view reaches Pico Bolívar, at about 4,978 metres the highest mountain in Venezuela.
Why it is worth it
From the city of Mérida in the Venezuelan Andes, a chain of cable-car sections climbs more than 3,000 metres up the flanks of the Sierra Nevada to Pico Espejo, at 4,765 metres. The Mérida cable car is the highest cable car in the world and one of the longest, and the ride carries passengers from the city's valley into the high mountains of the Venezuelan Andes.
The line was built at the end of the 1950s by a consortium of some 25 companies coordinated by the French firm Applevage, with the German company Heckel and the Swiss company Habegger responsible for the cable sections; public service began in March 1960. The route, about 12.5 km long, runs in stages from the base station of Barinitas, at 1,577 metres on the edge of the city, through the intermediate stations of La Montaña, La Aguada and Loma Redonda, to the summit terminal on Pico Espejo. Each stage crosses steep, broken ground with no road access, which made the original construction a considerable feat of mountain engineering.
The present system, built by Doppelmayr along the route of the original 1960 line, opened in October 2016. The cable car lies within Sierra Nevada National Park, which protects the highest peaks of the Venezuelan Andes, and from the upper stations the views extend across the summits of the Sierra Nevada de Mérida.
Getting there
The base station is in the city of Mérida, in the Venezuelan state of the same name; the summit terminal on Pico Espejo is about 11.5 km in a straight line from the town of Tabay. The nearest airport by straight-line distance is Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso Airport (VIG) at El Vigía, about 68 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Mérida Cable Car is a cable car system in Venezuela. Its base is located in the Venezuelan city of Mérida at an altitude of 1,577 metres (5,174 ft), and its terminus is on Pico Espejo, at 4,765 metres (15,633 ft). It is the highest and second longest cable car in the world. The system was opened to the public in 1960, and closed in 2008 for reconstruction. In October 2016, a new regular service was inaugurated.
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