40 Fun Facts About Cotopaxi

According to a popular local translation, the name Cotopaxi means the 'neck' of which heavenly body?

The Moon gives the peak its name in a common reading that joins Quechua 'coto' (neck) with Aymara 'phakhsi', a nod to a crater shaped like a crescent.

Cotopaxi's ice cap is one of the world's few glaciers lying almost directly on which line?

The Equator passes less than one degree of latitude north of Cotopaxi, but the ice survives because it only begins about 5,000 m up the cone.

Which Steven Spielberg film shows the lost cargo ship SS Cotopaxi stranded in the Gobi Desert?

Close Encounters of the Third Kind borrowed a real ship, named after the volcano, that vanished in 1925 on a coal run from Charleston to Havana.

Cotopaxi's summit, at roughly 5,900 metres, is almost exactly as high as which other famous volcano?

Kilimanjaro reaches 5,895 m, two metres short of Cotopaxi's usual figure of 5,897 m. Hans Meyer, the first to top the African giant, later climbed Cotopaxi too.

Cotopaxi's steep, near-symmetrical cone of layered lava and ash makes it which type of volcano?

Stratovolcano cones, also called composite volcanoes, are steeper than the broad shield volcanoes of Hawaii and are prone to explosive eruptions.

Climbers on Cotopaxi usually leave the José Ribas refuge for the summit at roughly what time?

Around midnight is the usual start, so that climbers top out by about 7:30 am and get back down before the sun softens the snow and shifts the crevasses.

The outdoor brand Cotopaxi, named after the Ecuadorian volcano, uses which animal as its mascot?

A llama fronts the company's colorful backpacks and jackets, and the name comes from a founder who spent part of his childhood in Ecuador.

Cotopaxi belongs to which belt of volcanoes, home to around two-thirds of the world's total?

Ring of Fire volcanoes trace the rim of the world's largest ocean for about 40,000 km, and roughly 90% of all earthquakes strike along the same belt.

The cargo ship SS Cotopaxi, named after the volcano, vanished in 1925 and joined which legend?

The Bermuda Triangle claimed the ship in popular lore, but a wreck found in the 1980s was finally identified as the missing coal carrier in January 2020.

Edward Whymper, who spent a night on Cotopaxi's summit in 1880, first climbed which Alpine peak?

The Matterhorn fell to Whymper in 1865, though four of his party died on the way down. His climb of Cotopaxi was one of the earliest on record.

Cotopaxi is Ecuador's second-highest summit, topped only by which giant volcano further south?

Chimborazo rises to 6,263 m, and because the planet bulges at its middle, its summit is the farthest point on the surface from the planet's center.

Which capital, about 50 km north of Cotopaxi, can see the volcano on its skyline on clear days?

Quito lies near enough that ash from the eruption of August 2015 dusted its southern and central districts.

What do volcanologists call the fast mudflows that Cotopaxi unleashes when eruptions melt its ice?

Lahars take their name from a Javanese word. Cotopaxi's flows of 1877 ran more than 100 km from the cone, and older ones carved many of the valleys around it.

Which provincial capital south of Cotopaxi has been wrecked more than once by its mudflows?

Latacunga was destroyed by eruptions in the 1700s and leveled again in 1877, yet it was rebuilt each time and is still the capital of Cotopaxi Province.

Which famous naturalist failed to climb Cotopaxi in 1802 and declared the volcano unclimbable?

Alexander von Humboldt turned back at about 4,500 m, and his verdict stood for 70 years until the first successful ascent in 1872.

The geologist who made the first recorded ascent of Cotopaxi in 1872 came from which country?

Germany was home to Wilhelm Reiss, who topped out on 28 November 1872 with his Colombian companion Ángel Escobar after years of exploring the Andes.

An 1862 painting of Cotopaxi erupting at sunrise was read by some viewers as a parable of which war?

The American Civil War was raging when the canvas went on show in New York in 1863, and its clash of light and darkness struck viewers as a comment on it.

Which US state has a tiny town called Cotopaxi, named after the volcano by an early prospector?

Colorado's Cotopaxi had just 44 residents at the 2020 census, and in 1882 it hosted a short-lived farming colony of Russian-Jewish immigrants.

Which English author made Cotopaxi erupt in his 1897 apocalyptic short story The Star?

H. G. Wells has a wandering star set off quakes, floods and eruptions across the globe, with Cotopaxi's lava reaching the coast within a day.

Which giant bird, a national symbol of Ecuador, soars over the slopes of Cotopaxi National Park?

Andean condor wings can span up to 3.3 m, and the birds are among the longest-lived in the world, sometimes passing 70 years.

South America's only native bear, found in Cotopaxi National Park, is named as if it wears what?

Spectacles are what the pale rings around its eyes resemble. The animal eats mostly plants and is the last surviving member of the short-faced bears.

Herds of which animal roam wild across the plains on the northern and eastern sides of Cotopaxi?

Horses run free in herds here, sharing the open country below the cone with white-tailed deer, wild rabbits and the occasional puma.

What name is given to the treeless highland grassland that surrounds Cotopaxi below its snow line?

Páramo covers much of Cotopaxi National Park: a belt of tussock grass, mosses and cushion plants squeezed between the last trees and the permanent snow.

What struck the climbers' refuge on Cotopaxi on Easter Sunday 1996, with deadly results?

An avalanche broke from the ice wall above in the warm midday sun and partly buried the hut; people trapped inside smashed windows on the downhill side to get out.

The blasts that woke Cotopaxi in August 2015 were phreatic, powered by the sudden expansion of what?

Steam flashes out when rising magma heats groundwater, so the first ash thrown up in 2015 was old rock rather than new lava. It ended about 70 years of quiet.

Cotopaxi exists because which oceanic plate is sliding beneath the western edge of South America?

Nazca Plate rock sinks under the continent, feeding the magma behind a volcanic belt that runs from Colombia all the way down to Chile.

Cotopaxi's lava flows are made mostly of which volcanic rock, typical of subduction zones?

Andesite takes its name from the Andes themselves, where it is abundant, and it sits midway between runny basalt and stiff, silica-rich rhyolite.

French scientists who watched Cotopaxi erupt in the 1740s had come to South America to measure what?

The shape of the Earth was the prize: by surveying an arc of the meridian, the mission helped show the globe is flattened at the poles and fed into the later metre.

Which festival in Cotopaxi Province honors the Virgin of Mercy, said to have halted a 1742 eruption?

Mama Negra is also known as the Holy Tragedy, and after 1742 grateful townspeople proclaimed the Virgin the 'Advocate and Patron of the Volcano'.

Which US landscape painter made at least ten canvases of Cotopaxi after travelling in South America?

Frederic Edwin Church first sketched the volcano in 1853, drawn there by an explorer's writings, and his best-known version shows it pouring smoke across a dawn sky.

Which US city's Institute of Arts displays the celebrated 1862 oil painting of Cotopaxi in eruption?

Detroit holds the canvas commissioned by James Lenox, the New York collector who also owned the first Turner paintings to reach America.

A tracking station near Cotopaxi caught the final signals in 1964 from which early US satellite?

Vanguard 1, launched in 1958 as the first solar-powered satellite, fell silent that May but has now stayed in orbit longer than any other human-made object.

Which rock band released a single called Cotopaxi from its 2009 album Octahedron?

The Mars Volta issued it as the lead single in Europe from their fifth studio album, and BBC Radio 1's Zane Lowe gave it a debut play in April 2009.

Which dormant volcano beside Cotopaxi shares its name, meaning 'stone face', with a 1530s general?

Rumiñahui the general led resistance to the Spanish after Atahualpa's execution, and his heavily eroded namesake stands 4,721 m high inside the national park.

In Ecuadorian legend, Cotopaxi stays angry and active after losing the love of which fellow volcano?

Tungurahua, a peak also nicknamed the Black Giant, chose a taller rival in the tale, which is why the jilted Cotopaxi is said to keep smouldering.

Which famous long-distance road runs past Cotopaxi National Park through Ecuador's highlands?

Pan-American Highway traffic covers the run from the capital to the park in about two hours, on a route that links 14 countries from North America to Argentina.

Cotopaxi National Park holds which distinction among the national parks of mainland Ecuador?

The oldest of them, it was the first national park created on the mainland; only the one protecting the Galápagos Islands, set up in 1959, came earlier.

Which president of Ecuador declared a state of emergency when Cotopaxi erupted in August 2015?

Rafael Correa acted the day after an ash column rose several kilometres above the crater, even though the official alert level stayed at yellow.

The wreck of the SS Cotopaxi, identified in 2020, lies about 40 miles off which US state?

Florida divers knew the site near St. Augustine as the Bear Wreck for decades before a marine biologist's 15-year investigation matched it to the lost ship.

The painter of the famous 1862 canvas of Cotopaxi erupting belonged to which art movement?

Hudson River School painters prized sketching nature on the spot, and this one filled notebooks in the Andes before working up his canvases in a New York studio.