12.18.14: Volcan Cotopaxi

Country: Ecuador

Elevation: 18,996 Feet

Last Eruption: 1786

Lat: 0.00 deg. N

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    Today we visited the second tallest volcano in Ecuador.  Volcan Cotopaxi is a striking and symmetrical volcano that rises to 19,347 feet.  The glaciers and snow fields start at about 16,100 feet and our goal was to build a snowman above 16,000 ft.  We also wanted to climb to 5000 meters (16,404 ft) in honor of our new European friends, Eric and Jerry.  I am pleased to report that we met our goals and spent a good hour above 16,000 acclimating for our Cayambe trip this coming weekend.  At 16,400 feet, there is only 55% of the available oxygen that exists at sea level.  As a result, my resting heart rate was about 100 beats per minute compared to 55 beats per minute at home.

Cotopaxi from the north.  A classic conical, snow-capped stratovolcano.

The glacial crevasses at 16,200 ft.

My altimeter watch guestimates your altitude with barometric pressure changes.  It's usually off by a couple hundred feet, but it also keeps a more accurate GPS elevation, but will only show it in meters.  We were actually at about 16,347 when I took this picture.

You can't read this unless you zoom in, but it says 5,006 meters (16,424). This was our personal best, beating our old record (set yesterday) by over 1,000 feet.

After the climb, we stopped at a local restaurant and had potato soup with aji (hot pepper sauce) and coca leaf tea (yeah, that coca leaf).  The soup was perfect and the locals swear by the coca plant's medicinal powers.  They make tea, lozenges, chewable candies, and sell the leaves for dipping, like a chewing tobacco.  Of course, our friend Pablo Escobar to the north in Columbia's Medellin region processed the leaves a little more intricately into the white powdery nose candy which apparently has a little more of a kick to it.  The tea and leaves don't have that effect, but do act as a mild stimulant similar to caffeine, but weaker.  The lozenges are used by climbers to ease the symptoms of altitude sickness.  I'll do a little more research on that one, but I can vouch for the tea; it was tasty and hit the spot after a log day climbing.  

Geek Notes

    -A stratovolcano, also known as a composite volcano, is a conical volcano built up by many layers (strata) of hardened lava, tephra, pumice, and volcanic ash. Unlike shield volcanoes, stratovolcanoes are characterized by a steep profile and periodic explosive eruptions and effusive eruptions, although some have collapsed craters called calderas. The lava flowing from stratovolcanoes typically cools and hardens before spreading far due to high viscosity. The magma forming this lava is often felsic, having high-to-intermediate levels of silica (as in rhyolite, dacite, or andesite), with lesser amounts of less-viscous mafic magma. Extensive felsic lava flows are uncommon, but have travelled as far as 15 km (9.3 mi). (wiki)

    Stratovolcanoes are sometimes called "composite volcanoes" because of their composite layered structure built up from sequential outpourings of eruptive materials. They are among the most common types of volcanoes, in contrast to the less common shield volcanoes. Two famous stratovolcanoes are Krakatoa, best known for its catastrophic eruption in 1883 and Vesuvius, famous for its destruction of the towns Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 AD. Both eruptions claimed thousands of lives. (ibid.)

    -Pablo Escobar was the former head of the Medellin drug cartel who ruled with an iron fist.  By the 1990s, he was earning over $30B per year selling cocaine, primarily by smuggling it into the United States.  While seen as an enemy of the United States and Colombian governments, Escobar was a hero to many in Medellín (especially the poor people); he was a natural at public relations and he worked to create goodwill among the poor people of Colombia. (wiki)

    A lifelong sports fan, he was credited with building football fields and multi-sports courts, as well as sponsoring children's football teams. Escobar was responsible for the construction of many hospitals, schools and churches in western Colombia, which gained him popularity inside the local Roman Catholic Church. He worked hard to cultivate his Robin Hood image, and frequently distributed money to the poor through housing projects and other civic activities, which gained him notable popularity among the poor.         The population of Medellín often helped Escobar serving as lookouts, hiding information from the authorities, or doing whatever else they could to protect him. Many of the wealthier residents of Medellín also viewed him as a threat. At the height of his power, drug traffickers from Medellín and other areas were handing over between 20% and 35% of their Colombian cocaine-related profits to Escobar, because he was the one who shipped the cocaine successfully to the US. The Colombian cartels' continuing struggles to maintain supremacy resulted in Colombia quickly becoming the world’s murder capital with 25,100 violent deaths in 1991 and 27,100 in 1992. This increased murder rate was fueled by Escobar's giving money to his hitmen as a reward for killing police officers, over 600 of whom died in this way.

    -Econ note: A cartel is a group of sellers of a good or service, each with enough market share to impact the price.  Instead of getting in a price war and squandering potential profits, cartels "collude" and agree to to act as a single provider, reduce output, and thus, maximize their collective profits. But there's a catch.  Once the prices start to climb due to the restricted output, each member of the cartel has an individual incentive to secretly increase his own output to capitalize on the high price.  If everyone does this, the price collapses due to the massive increase in production, and the cartel falls apart.  So what you need is an enforcement mechanism to keep everyone in line... Pablo was the enforcer.  Ever wonder why Cocaine was so expensive and drug dealer go so rich?  Part of the reason was the success of the Medellin Drug Cartel.  The other part was our "war on drugs."  By making cocaine a class 1 narcotic, and frequently confiscating drug shipments, the US government helped the cartels keep prices high.  Matter of fact, the more successful the DEA was, the more money the cartels stood to make via increases in price.

    OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) is also a cartel.  Saddam Hussein (former dictator, Iraq) used to be their enforcer, possessing the worlds fourth largest army at the peak of his rule.  Like Pablo Escobar, he was a thug.  So I guess if you're a bully, you should consider a career as a cartel enforcer.  The hours are long, but the pay is pretty decent. 

    -Change of subject. Acclimation is a two step process.  The general rule is climb high, sleep low.  As I write this on the morning of the 19th, It dawned on me that the past two days have been optimal acclimation days.  Having climbed to 15, 413 feet, then 16,424 feet, not only did I get a great work out, I also return both days to sleep at 9,500 feet in Quito. 

    During the "climb high" phase, you shock your body with the low air pressure.  It responds with immediate increases in your heart rate and respiration rate.  As I mentioned above, my resting hear rate was double what it normally is.  Your body is phenomenal at adjusting to changes in the environment (i.e., when you're cold it shivers, &c.), but the process for adjusting to altitude takes a while.  After experiencing the effects of altitude, your body will start to adjust by producing more red blood cells, rich with hemoglobin.  This production occurs best when you body is not busy dealing with the thin air, thus the "sleep low" bit.

    -You may have noticed I used "&c." in the previous paragraph, instead of the more common "etc."  They mean the same thing, but &c looks cooler to me and saves a keystroke.  Etc. is short for "et cetera," which is Latin for "and all else."  The ampersand "&" is how old scribes used to short-hand the Latin "et."  So "&" means "et" or as we say it, "and." If you look hard at it you can sort of see an "e" and a "t" in there.  All of this got me thinking one day a few months ago, "why all the fuss over abbreviating things, especially words as short as "et" & "and?"  I mean really, aren't they already short enough?  And more importantly, why do we call "&," the ampersand? That's a big thing to call a short symbol.  Interestingly enough, "&" was not created to shorten the word "ampersand," the word came hundreds of years after the symbol was in wide spread use.  It turns out that up until the 1800s, school children used to recite the alphabet and included "&" as the last symbol.  But since it stood alone as a "non-letter," they would do this: "A, B, C.........X, Y, Z, and per se, AND," which meant, A-Z and by itself, "&."  If you say "and per se and" really fast it sounds like ampersand.  Messing something up into a new word is called a "Mondegreen."  You can look that up yourself.