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Aconcagua
The stone sentinel, highest peak in the Americas and the Southern Hemisphere
Aconcagua is the highest mountain outside Asia, a broad-shouldered massif of reddish rock and ice that crowns the Argentine Andes at 6,961 metres. No point in the Americas, nor anywhere in the Southern or Western Hemisphere, rises higher. Despite its altitude, its standard north-side route is a long, demanding walk-up rather than a technical climb, which has made it a magnet for ambitious trekkers - though its thin air and brutal storms claim lives every season.
The mountain rises in Argentina's Mendoza Province, near the Chilean border, in a high desert landscape carved by glaciers and battered by the wind the climbers call the viento blanco. Geologically it is the uplifted, folded debris of marine sediments and ancient volcanic rock, thrust skyward as the Nazca plate subducts beneath South America. The Polish Glacier on its eastern flank and the Horcones valley on the west frame the principal approaches, and the summit's extreme dryness leaves much of the upper mountain as bare scree rather than permanent snow.
The first recorded ascent came in 1897, when the Swiss guide Matthias Zurbriggen reached the top during an expedition led by Edward FitzGerald. Long before that, the Inca left offerings high on the mountain, and the mummified body of a child sacrificed centuries ago was found near 5,300 metres. Today Aconcagua Provincial Park manages the thousands who attempt the peak each year as one of the Seven Summits, balancing access with the fragility of its high-altitude desert.