Notebook: Chimborazo, Ecuador
Because the Earth is not quite spherical but is flattened at the poles and bulges out at the equator, the summit of the volcano Chimborazo in Ecuador is further from the center of the earth than the summit of Mt Everest is. When I took this photo I was at around 16,000 feet above sea level... I was not feeling terrible well, notwithstanding the fact that I was "on top of the world", and I rested at this spot while my two colleagues walked on. For an hour or two I sat by myself and watched the clouds scudding across the summit of the mountain and the patches of sunlight and shadow chasing across the glaciers and over the paramo.
"Chimborazo, Cotopaxi |
One of the photos I took at Chimborazo I later used as the cover photograph for my book "Glaciers". I thought it was a nice image showing the whole stretch of a glacier from the snow-covered accumulation zone right down through the icefall and ice-avalanche zone to the very bottom. Chimborazo is also good for geology/geomorphology lectures to illustrate the sometimes very direct link between geologic processes and geomorphic forms. The several distinct summits of Chimborazo that can be seen from some angles each reflect a different phase of volcanic activity. In the good old days of slide projectors and overhead transparencies I used to superimpose an OHP line drawing of the geological cross-section through the mountain onto the photo below.
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