Huayna Potosí
| Huayna Potosí | ||
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 South side of Huayna Potosí from the Altiplano |
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| height | 6088 m | |
| location | La Paz Department , Bolivia | |
| Mountains | Cordillera Real , Andes | |
| Coordinates | 16 ° 15 '43 " S , 68 ° 8' 56" W | |
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| rock | granite | |
| First ascent | 1919 by Rudolf Dienst and Adolf Schulze | |
The Huayna Potosí is a prominent, glaciated mountain peak with a height of 6088 m in the Cordillera Real , 25 km north of the Bolivian seat of government La Paz in the South American Andes . The mountain is a popular destination for mountaineers and tourists because of its characteristics and the easy ascent for its height. In the Aymara language , the name means "young mountain" (huayna = young; potosí = mountain).
geology
The Huayna Potosí is a granite massif, geologically a batholith . The entire Cordillera Real between Mururata and Illampú consists of a series of different granite bodies. The batholiths of the Eastern Cordillera have significant tin deposits on the edges. Gold veins are found in other geological provinces. Freshly broken Huayna Potosí granite is light gray, the weathered surface is orange-red, Huayna Potosí granite breaks into slabs and blocks like the granite in Bergell , for example at Campo Roca.
The Huayna Potosí is glaciated on all sides, especially on the Amazon side. The glacier tongues reach down to around 5,000 m. The glaciers of the Huayna Potosí are explored in detail for economic reasons, especially the Zongo glacier. The dramatic loss of glacial ice as a result of global warming , measured over the last few decades, is two to three meters thick of ice per year.
Rockclimbing
The Huayna Potosí is clearly visible from El Alto , the Altiplano and Lake Titicaca, and the starting point, the Zongo Pass, can be reached in just under two hours by car from the center of La Paz. It is climbed by several hundred to a thousand people every year. The main season is June, July and August. All trekking agencies in La Paz offer the Huayna Potosí in their programs. The Huayna Potosí is an easy six-thousander, mainly because of its easy accessibility and the infrastructure on the mountain. Once acclimatized, a comfortable, family hotel in La Paz offers an ideal “base camp” for several six-thousand-meter ascents. With a few hours' bus or taxi ride from there, you can reach some starting points that are roughly at the same height as the summit of Mont Blanc in the Alps.
In addition to the normal route, there is the south face (wall height approx. 300 m, approx. 45 ° to 50 ° steep) and the west face (wall height approx. 1,000 m, various routes (in rock IV to V to UIAA, in the ice approx. 60 °) steep)) for an ascent .
Infrastructure
The starting point for the Huayna Potosi is the reservoir at the Zongo Pass , at 4,750 m there is a mountaineering accommodation, the Refugio Huayna Potosí . In addition, there has been a new, larger mountaineering hut since 2008, a project of the Zongo community Llaulini. The Zongo Pass can be reached by early morning public bus from Plaza Ballivian in El Alto. In the afternoon there is a scheduled bus service from the Zongo Pass back to El Alto.
Since the middle of 2006 there has been the Campo Alto Roca on the edge of the glacier at 5130 m , a stone-built, manned mountaineering hut. The hut was built by the local mountain guide association. It is clearly visible from the Represa Zongo dam and in the satellite image. In addition, there has been a small orange-red bivouac box since the 1980s , 150 m higher than Campo Roca, it is owned by one of the numerous agencies in La Paz.
Organization of an ascent
For the ascent, it is advisable to hire a mountain guide from an agency in La Paz . All equipment can also be rented from the agency. For an experienced and acclimatized mountaineer, the ascent is an undertaking of one to two days. You take a taxi (car, no four-wheel drive required) and a mountain guide to the Zongo Pass at noon and climb to the Campo Alto Roca hut for the night in two hours. The next morning at 2 a.m. the ascent to the summit begins. The summit is reached at sunrise via the gently sloping, snow -covered glacier, a steep step ( grieta ) halfway and a 150 m high 40–45 ° steep end wall ( pala ). If you are well organized, you can be back in La Paz at noon after the descent to the Zongo Pass.
Surroundings
The area surrounding Huayna Potosí has an unusual infrastructure on all sides. On the Amazon or Yungas side, a large part of the electricity for La Paz is generated by a series of ten hydropower plants.
The power plants are fed by the meltwater from the glaciers, the summer rain and a few small reservoirs. You can hike for days along the water supply lines ( acequias ) at the altitude of the humid puna . The difference in altitude for hydropower generation from the glacial stream to the Yungas is approx. 4,000 meters.
When trekking through the Zongo Valley, all climatic and vegetation levels from glacier ice to the Amazon rainforest can be hiked over the short distance of 20 km. At 3,600 m you enter the uppermost forest floor, the ceja de montana or just ceja , a cloud-covered, damp, cold cloud forest with lots of bamboo; deeper then into the warmer floor of the medio yungas with tree ferns, lianas and epiphytes; and below 2,400 m in the verdadera yungas , the warm forest valleys with intensive agricultural use of the valley slopes and extensive coca cultivation since historical times. On the Altiplano side, the meltwater from the Huayna-Potosí and Condoriri glaciers provide all the drinking water for El Alto and La Paz. The Milluni tin mine on the way to Zongo has been closed since around 1987.
Maps and guides
- Liam O'Brien: A new map of the Cordillera Real de los Andes. reprint. 1, 1995, pp. 135,000, OCLC 254316696 .
- Carta Nacional de Bolivia, Hoja Zongo 5945. I, 1: 50,000, IGM ed. 1968, OCLC 63739407 .
- Carta Nacional de Bolivia, Hoja Milluni 5945. II, 1: 50,000, IGM ed. 1985, reprint 1996.
- Hermann Kiendler: The Andes; from Chimborazo to Marmolejo - all 6000s at a glance. Panico Alpinverlag, Köngen 2007, ISBN 978-3-936740-36-3 . (The information about the infrastructure in the mountains around La Paz is not up to date, around the beginning of the 1990s)
literature
- Ruedi Horber: Huayna Potosi - La Paz's local mountain. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. July 9, 1998, p. 67, alpinism.
- BA: Bolivia's urban landscape in the heart of the Andes. La Paz and El Alto - on the way to the Metropolis? In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. 4th / 5th March 2006, p. 6, international. (online) (better information than in many travel guides)
- Stanley S. Shepard: One day climbs, Cordillera Real. In: American Alpine Journal 1980. 1980, ISBN 0-930410-76-9 , p. 592/3, climbs & expeditions: Bolivia.
- Michael Tistl: The gold deposits of the northern Cordillera Real / Bolivia. Dissertation . Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-496-00251-4 . (Sketches of map and profile. Granite and batholith)
- Bernd Lehmann: Stratified Sn deposits in the Cordillera Real, Bolivia . Dissertation. Berlin 1979, DNB 800229398 . (geol.map Milluni with Huayna Potosi)
- I. Chaffaut, M. Guillaume: El Niño and glacier melt in tropical Andes . IRD, 2004.
- Antoine Rabatel: Chronologie et interpretation paleoclimatique des fluctuations des glaciers dans les Andes de Bolivie (16 ° S) depuis le maximum du petit age glaciaire (17'siecle) . Dissertation. Grenoble 2005. (online) (French)
- Michael Kessler: Bolivian Andes. In: C. Burga, F. Klötzli, G. Grabherr (eds.): Mountains of the earth, landscape, climate, flora. Ulmer, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-8001-4165-5 , pp. 456-463.
- Kurt Hueck: Los bosques de Sudamerica; ecologia, composicion e importancia economica. gtz, Eschborn 1978, ISBN 3-88085-053-4 . also:
- Kurt Hueck: The forests of South America. G. Fischer, Stuttgart 1966.
- A. Weberbauer: The flora of the Peruvian Andes . (= Vegetation of the earth. Volume 12). Engelmann, Leipzig 1911. (reprint Vaduz (Fl) 1976) (detailed Titicaca basin, puna, ceja and yungas by Sandia (Nudo de Apolobamba), once the plant drawings)
- Tony Morrison, Editor of Time Life Books: The Andes . (= Wilderness of the world ). Time-Life, Amsterdam 1975, chapter: Puna and "Descent into the cloud forest" (Zongo), DNB 770284604 , pp. 116–125.
- Rudolf Dienst: In the darkest Bolivia. Andean pampas and jungle trips. Strecker & Schröder, Stuttgart 1926, pp. 141–154, first ascent of the Caca-Aca or Huayna Potosi.
