Cotopaxi
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40 free Cotopaxi trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Cotopaxi is the snow-capped cone that dominates Ecuador's highlands, a volcano so symmetrical it looks drawn with a ruler and so restless that whole towns have been rebuilt in its shadow. It has been worshipped, painted, climbed and feared for centuries. This quiz turns the best Cotopaxi volcano fun facts into questions: how the mountain was built and why its eruptions are so dangerous, who reached the top and how, which animals live on its slopes, and where its name turns up far from South America, from the cinema to the shop shelf. It suits travelers planning a trip to Cotopaxi National Park, geography and geology fans, students and anyone who likes a good mountain story. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing the volcano far better than when you started.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01According to a popular local translation, the name Cotopaxi means the 'neck' of which heavenly body?
The Moon
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.
Q 02Cotopaxi's ice cap is one of the world's few glaciers lying almost directly on which line?
The Equator
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.
Q 03Which Steven Spielberg film shows the lost cargo ship SS Cotopaxi stranded in the Gobi Desert?
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
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.
Q 04Cotopaxi's summit, at roughly 5,900 metres, is almost exactly as high as which other famous volcano?
Kilimanjaro
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.
Q 05Cotopaxi's steep, near-symmetrical cone of layered lava and ash makes it which type of volcano?
Stratovolcano
Stratovolcano cones, also called composite volcanoes, are steeper than the broad shield volcanoes of Hawaii and are prone to explosive eruptions.
Q 06Climbers on Cotopaxi usually leave the José Ribas refuge for the summit at roughly what time?
Around midnight
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.
Q 07The outdoor brand Cotopaxi, named after the Ecuadorian volcano, uses which animal as its mascot?
A llama
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.
Q 08Cotopaxi belongs to which belt of volcanoes, home to around two-thirds of the world's total?
Ring of Fire
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.
Q 09The cargo ship SS Cotopaxi, named after the volcano, vanished in 1925 and joined which legend?
The Bermuda Triangle
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.
Q 10Edward Whymper, who spent a night on Cotopaxi's summit in 1880, first climbed which Alpine peak?
The Matterhorn
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.
Q 11Cotopaxi is Ecuador's second-highest summit, topped only by which giant volcano further south?
Chimborazo
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.
Q 12Which capital, about 50 km north of Cotopaxi, can see the volcano on its skyline on clear days?
Quito
Quito lies near enough that ash from the eruption of August 2015 dusted its southern and central districts.
Q 13What do volcanologists call the fast mudflows that Cotopaxi unleashes when eruptions melt its ice?
Lahars
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.
Q 21South America's only native bear, found in Cotopaxi National Park, is named as if it wears what?
Spectacles
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.
Q 22Herds of which animal roam wild across the plains on the northern and eastern sides of Cotopaxi?
Horses
Horses run free in herds here, sharing the open country below the cone with white-tailed deer, wild rabbits and the occasional puma.
Q 23What name is given to the treeless highland grassland that surrounds Cotopaxi below its snow line?
Páramo
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.
Q 14Which provincial capital south of Cotopaxi has been wrecked more than once by its mudflows?
Latacunga
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.
Q 15Which famous naturalist failed to climb Cotopaxi in 1802 and declared the volcano unclimbable?
Alexander von Humboldt
Alexander von Humboldt turned back at about 4,500 m, and his verdict stood for 70 years until the first successful ascent in 1872.
Q 16The geologist who made the first recorded ascent of Cotopaxi in 1872 came from which country?
Germany
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.
Q 17An 1862 painting of Cotopaxi erupting at sunrise was read by some viewers as a parable of which war?
The American Civil 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.
Q 18Which US state has a tiny town called Cotopaxi, named after the volcano by an early prospector?
Colorado
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.
Q 19Which English author made Cotopaxi erupt in his 1897 apocalyptic short story The Star?
H. G. Wells
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.
Q 20Which giant bird, a national symbol of Ecuador, soars over the slopes of Cotopaxi National Park?
Andean condor
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.
Q 24What struck the climbers' refuge on Cotopaxi on Easter Sunday 1996, with deadly results?
An avalanche
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.
Q 25The blasts that woke Cotopaxi in August 2015 were phreatic, powered by the sudden expansion of what?
Steam
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.
Q 26Cotopaxi exists because which oceanic plate is sliding beneath the western edge of South America?
Nazca
Nazca Plate rock sinks under the continent, feeding the magma behind a volcanic belt that runs from Colombia all the way down to Chile.
Q 27Cotopaxi's lava flows are made mostly of which volcanic rock, typical of subduction zones?
Andesite
Andesite takes its name from the Andes themselves, where it is abundant, and it sits midway between runny basalt and stiff, silica-rich rhyolite.
Q 28French scientists who watched Cotopaxi erupt in the 1740s had come to South America to measure what?
The shape of the Earth
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.
Q 29Which festival in Cotopaxi Province honors the Virgin of Mercy, said to have halted a 1742 eruption?
Mama Negra
Mama Negra is also known as the Holy Tragedy, and after 1742 grateful townspeople proclaimed the Virgin the 'Advocate and Patron of the Volcano'.
Q 30Which US landscape painter made at least ten canvases of Cotopaxi after travelling in South America?
Frederic Edwin Church
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.