author, mountaineering writer – books, blog, opinion
It’s time for my latest set of videos: Unexplored Ecuador. Last autumn Edita and I made our fourth trip to Ecuador, and decided to get a little off the beaten track by visiting some of the country’s lesser known volcanoes and mountain areas.
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There are few more quintessentially conical volcanoes than Cotopaxi, and it’s hard to look at without wanting to climb it. Edita hadn’t, and as soon as the mountain re-opened after the eruption in 2015, she had to do so at the first opportunity.
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Acclimatisation is a funny thing. On the face of it, it seemed like we had a good plan. After a full day acclimatising at 2850m in Quito, we would climb a 4258m volcano followed by a 4640m volcano. Then we
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Life has been hectic in the Horrell household recently and I’ve been finding it hard to keep on top of my writing. It is time for a holiday. We are returning to Ecuador for a couple of weeks to hike and climb some less-frequented peaks.
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Rumiñahui is an extinct volcano 14km north-west of Cotopaxi, Ecuador’s highest active volcano. Rumiñahui the mountain is named after Rumiñahui the Inca warrior, whose name translates as ‘stone face’ – as appropriate a name as any for this particular mountain.
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Last Friday I reached the summit of another metaphorical mountain. After seven months of intensive scribbling I finished the first draft of my next major book. There’s a little way to go before it’s ready for publication, but here’s a teaser to whet your appetite.
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Tomorrow Ecuador’s most popular volcano will be open again for the first time since a major eruption in 2015. But is it safe or is the decision premature? Here are my thoughts after a month in Ecuador.
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The fun is over. Tomorrow the serious business of cycling up Chimborazo begins. Our aim is to cycle from sea level then climb to the summit, with a bit of hiking in between. I have no illusions. It’s going to
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Our visit to Ecuador over Christmas gave us a taste for volcanoes, so a visit to Europe’s best known one, Vesuvius, was a must. It gave us the opportunity to explore the nearby Amalfi Coast, a place that’s been described to me as mountainous.
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I love the open geography of Ecuador’s central highlands, a high-altitude landscape of free-standing volcanoes. Six years ago I went there and climbed five of them. This Christmas I will be making a long overdue return visit.
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