Chimborazo
Written by Fraser Cain
Chimborazo
Chimborazo is a dormant stratovolcano located in Ecuador. It's the highest peak in Ecuador, and depending on how you measure it, Chimborazo is actually the most distant point from the Earth's equator. Although Mount Everest is the highest point above sea level, the rotating Earth is bulged at its equator. Since Chimborazo is closer to the equator, it's the most distant from the center of the Earth. The peak measures 6,268 meters above sea level, and 6,384.4 km from the Earth's center (just 2.1 km further than Everest).
Geologists believe that Chimborazo's last eruption was in the first millennium AD. The peak of the volcano collapsed about 35,000 years ago, producing a major debris avalanche. It has probably erupted half a dozen times in the last 10,000 years or so, producing several pyroclastic flows that reached down to an elevation of 3,800 meters. The city of Riobamba, with a population of 230,000 people is built atop one of the pyroclastic flows.
The first person to climb to the summit of Chimborazo was Edward Whymper, who reached the top in 1880. Some people doubted that he actually reached the summit, and so he and his team ascended the mountain again the next year using a different route. Now the mountain is a popular route for climbing, with a series of mountain huts located across the mountain.
We have written many articles about volcanoes for Universe Today. Here's an article about famous volcanoes, and here's another about Cotopaxi, which is also located in Ecuador.
Want more resources on the Earth? Here's a link to NASA's Human Spaceflight page, and here's NASA's Visible Earth.
We have also recorded an episode of Astronomy Cast about Earth, as part of our tour through the Solar System – Episode 51: Earth.
Filed under: Astronomy
Tags: Earth science, ecuador, stratovolcanoes, volcanism, volcano, volcanoes
