Cotopaxi

Rising like an immaculate porcelain cone above the Ecuadorian *páramo*, the 5,897-meter stratovolcano has reigned as a sacred deity—or *huaca*—since pre-Incan antiquity. Its volatile temperament reshaped regional geography through cataclysmic eruptions, most famously in 1768 and 1877, when pyroclastic flows melted glaciers and swept lahars hundreds of kilometers outward. Prussian polymath Alexander von Humboldt attempted its ascent in 1802, declaring it an unrivaled natural monument, though it wasn't conquered until British mountaineer Edward Whymper reached the 800-meter-wide caldera rim in 1880. Today, its near-perfect symmetrical flank presents a dramatic contrast of dark basaltic rock crowned by an immense, crevassed glacier mantle. Trekkers laboring along the zig-zagging scree toward the José Rivas Refuge at 4,864 meters feel the stark bite of altitude and sub-zero Andean gusts, their boots crunching into loose, crimson-tinted volcanic cinder. The thin air carries a faint, sharp scent of subterranean sulfur, an omnipresent reminder of the active magma chamber below. Downward across the valley floor, the windswept plateau reveals wild horses darting through golden *paja* grasslands, while the silver sheen of Laguna de Limpiopungo mirrors the shifting cloud shadows across the Avenue of the Volcanoes.