An Italian expedition in with super-accurate GPS equipment has fixed the peak's elevation at The mountain is geologically complex, and while many of the rocks that form it are volcanic, the general feeling seems to be that Aconcagua is not an eroded, long-dormant volcano, as one might suppose. That leaves Ojos del Salado, in the Puna de Atacama well north of Aconcagua, as the world's highest volcano.
The peak is located 15 km east of the main crest of the Andes, entirely in Argentina. This is the dry side of the Andes, so, despite its height, Aconcagua is not particularly icy or snowy. The standard routes up the mountain involve no glacier travel.
The area is not as arid as the bone-dry Puna de Atacama, but the glaciation is less than in the Andean peaks of Peru and Patagonia.
With a city of 4 million Santiago, Chile kilometers away, and with the major trans-Andean highway from Santiago to Mendoza, Argentina passing just south of the peak, access is easy to Aconcagua.
The standard route is just a long hike, and by far the greatest difficulty is the high elevation. Altitude sickness kills unacclimatized climbers on this mountain, so it is important to go up slowly.
The other main danger is storms--Aconcagua is exceptionally windy, and one must be prepared to wait out bad weather.
Two weeks is the recommended minimum time it would take to fly there from the USA and do the hike, and three would be better. Aconcagua makes an attractive destination: there is no easier way to climb to m in the world, nor is there an easier peak with more prominence or isolation.
Peak Lists. At 22, feet 6, meters , not only is it the highest mountain in South America, it is the tallest peak in all of the Americas, as well as the Southern and Western Hemispheres. Aconcagua is located in Argentina, in the province of Mendoza, and lies 70 miles kilometers northwest of the provincial capital, Mendoza, and 9. To the north and east is Valle de las Vacas, and to the west and south is the Valle de los Horcones Inferior. The mountain is part of the Aconcagua Provincial Park, a protected natural area in the Andes that was established in It is not exactly known where the name Aconcagua came from.
One possible origin is that it derived from the native Quechuan words akun , or "summit," ka , or "other" and agua , or "admired" or "feared," according to the Encyclopedia of World Geography. Another possibility is that it comes from Aconca-Hue , an Arauca phrase that translates as "comes from the other side" — meaning the other side of the Aconcagua River. The name also may be derived from ackon cahuak , Quechuan words meaning "stone sentinel.
The Andes Mountains were formed as the result of subduction of the oceanic Nazca Plate under the South American continent, according to Marieke Dechesne, a geologist with the U.
Geological Survey. Aconcagua used to be a volcano , when the oceanic plate dipped at a higher angle under the continent. However, sometime in the Miocene, about 8 to 10 million years ago, the subduction angle started to decrease causing the magma to stop melting and increasing the horizontal stresses between the oceanic plate and the continent, causing the thrust faults that lifted Aconcagua up off its volcanic root.
The vegetation and wildlife on Aconcagua is concentrated below 13, feet 4, m , according to the Encyclopedia of World Geography. A number of expeditions have since explored other routes. Many cross features named by the nations that first led these expeditions, such as the Polish Glacier, Plaza Argentina, and Plaza Francia.
In this image, the mountain and the ridgeline of the Andes dominates the scene. Vegetation in the area rarely grows at elevations above 4, meters 13, feet , so this natural-color scene centered on the river valley of the Horcones River appears very barren.
The large image shows a wider area around the mountain, including Santiago, the Chilean capital city, to the south and east of the mountain.
This is a natural-color image made using red, blue, and green wavelengths TM bands 3, 2, and 1. Vegetation is green, grey areas are exposed rock or concrete structures, permanent snow is white, while much of the exposed ground is barren and brown.
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