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Aconcagua is
the highest mountain in the Western hemisphere, located in
western Argentina, near the Chile border. Aconcagua is a
gigantic mass of rock, not picturesque in the traditional Alpine
sense, but magnificent by its size alone. It dominates the sky
west of Santiago, Chile's capital city, and is visible from the
Pacific coast, 100 miles away. Though the mountain's summit
crest and radiating ridges are largely windswept free of snow,
large glaciers fill the valleys on all but the southern and
western flanks. Some climbing routes are relatively
straightforward hikes to the top, but this is the very reason
that Aconcagua has one of the highest mountain death tolls in
the world: It is a popular mountain, and many of its climbers
tend to move too swiftly up the mountain, with little respect
for the elevation or the weather, which on Aconcagua can quickly
become severe. |
