Huascarán
Encyclopedia : H : HU : HUA : Huascarán
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Huascarán or Nevado Huascarán is a mountain of the Cordillera Blanca, part of the Western Andes. At 6768 m its southern peak (Huascarán Sur) is the highest in Peru and the fourth highest in South America. The summit was first reached in 1932 by a joint German–Austrian expedition. The north peak (Huascarán Norte) had previously been climbed (1908) by a US expedition that included Annie Smith Peck. Nevado Huascaran is the extinct, eroded remnant of what was once a vastly taller stratovolcano, and is millions of years old.
On 31 May 1970 the Ancash earthquake caused a substantial part of the north side of the mountain to collapse. The block of falling ice and rock was about 1 mile long, half a mile wide, and half a mile deep. In about five minutes it flowed 11 miles to the town. The town of Yungay was completely buried by ice and rock, causing the deaths of more than 17,000 people. At that moment there was a Czechoslovak mountaineering team on the mountain, none of whose members were ever seen again, dead or alive.
http://www-astronomy.mps.ohio-state.edu/~frogel/Peru98/Peru98_Yungay/0Peru98_Yungay_home.html
Huascarán gives its name to the Huascarán National Park which surrounds it, and is a popular location for trekking and mountaineering.
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