Cordillera Oriental (Equador)

There are six volcanoes over 5000 meters situated in Cordillera Oriental. All of them are popular among climbers but only Cotopaxi can be considered as a benchmark among volcanoes that poses full set of accompanying attributes - the ideal cone, round crater rim and massive snow-white ice cap. According to all of these reasons the Cotopaxi ascent is considered by the mountaineers as a unit of measurement, "litmus test" by which all others volcanoes are compared. Well-developed tourist infrastructure, proximity to the capital city and numbers of clear days per year - everything here does to try your hand at the one of the most classic volcano of our planet. None of the routes to Cotopaxi can be called boring - each of them required crampons, ropes and ice axes that can help you to climb steep ice slopes and traverse deep crevasses.

Cordillera Oriental is a mountain range in Ecuador Andes Colombia that lies along the Pacific Coast. Its highest point is the volcano Cotopaxi, towering at 5897 meters above sea level.

Cordillera Oriental is located in Ecuador and Peru and lies along Pacific Ocean's coast inside the continental part.

All the highest Ecuadorian mountains such as Cotopaxi and Antisana have the glacial ice on their summits which was mined by locals (the so-called "Hieleros" from Spanish "Hielo" for "Ice") to be sold in the markets of the surrounding cities.

 

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