The avalanche was a result of recent heavy snows and not volcanic activity. The last recorded eruption of Chimbo was 1400 years ago and is considered an inactive volcano. Overall Chimbo is considered a safe climb from objective dangers even though it can be quite cold and windy.\u00a0In 1994 an avalanche left 10 people dead, including one Swiss and six French nationals.<\/p>\n
The summit of Chimborazo is often cited as the highest point on earth due to its distance from the earth’s center. With the planet being a spheroid shape it is thicker around the Equator than measured around the poles. Thus with Chiombo close to the equator, the summit is\u00a06,384.4\u00a0km\/3,967.1\u00a0mi from the Earth’s center, compared to Everest’s at 6,382.3\u00a0km or 3,965.8\u00a0miles.<\/sup><\/p>\n As I saw in 2019, the upper slopes of Chimbo are at a perfect angle for avalanches, around 32 degrees. We reached the false summit before a white-out suddenly developed stopping our progress.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My condolences to all the lost, and their families, friends, and teammates.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Climb On!<\/p>\n Alan<\/p>\n Memories are everything<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A rare deadly avalanche on Ecuador’s highest peak, Chimborazo at 20,549-feet\/6,263-meters, took four lives on Sunday, October 24, 2021. An all Ecuadoran team of 12 climbers and guides was approaching the false summit near 6,100-meters when the snow gave way. One person was injured. Another group of 20 required assistance. The incident occurred at 6:30 in the morning as reported by Emergency organization Integrated Security Service ECU911. The mountain is closed for climbers at the moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":32033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"A rare deadly avalanche on Ecuador's highest peak, Chimborazo at 20,549-feet\/6,263-meters, took four lives on Sunday, October 24, 2021. An all Ecuadoran team of 12 climbers and guides was approaching the false summit near 6,100-meters when the snow gave way. One person was injured. Another group of 20 required assistance.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[531,7,530],"tags":[536,432],"class_list":["post-40129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chimborazo","category-climbing-news","category-ecuador-volcanoes","tag-chimborazo","tag-climbing-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Chimborazo.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Chimborazo](\"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/IMG_4762-640x480.jpeg\")