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Updated: July 13, 2025
It happened that Gamarra did not know we were planning to go to Cotahuasi. Had he known this, and also had he suspected the trials that were before him on Mt. Coropuna, he probably would have begged off but I am anticipating. On the 2d of October, Tucker, Hinckley, Corporal Gamarra and I left Arequipa; Watkins followed a week later.
We finally came to realize that whatever supplies and provisions were carried up Coropuna would have to be borne on our own shoulders. That evening the top of the truncated dome, which was just visible from the valley near our camp, was bathed in a roseate Alpine glow, unspeakably beautiful. The air, however, was very bitter and the neighboring brook froze solid.
There was little to interest us in our immediate surroundings, but in the distance was Coropuna, and I had just begun to study the problem of possible routes for climbing the highest peak when Mr. Hinckley's mule trotted briskly across the trail directly in front of me, kicked up her heels, and again sent him sprawling over the sand, barometer, camera, plates, and all.
On the preceding afternoon the snow had been so soft one frequently went in over one's knees, but now everything was frozen hard. We left camp at five o'clock. It was still dark. The great dome of Coropuna loomed up on our left, cut off from direct attack by gigantic ice falls. To reach it we must first surmount the saddle on the main ridge.
With these two new aneroids, made with a wide margin of safety, we felt satisfied that, once at the summit, we should know whether there was a chance that Bandelier was right and this was indeed the top of America. For exact measurements we depended on Topographer Hendriksen, who was due to triangulate Coropuna in the course of his survey along the 73d meridian.
Soon the trail turned abruptly to the left, away from our old friend Coropuna. We wondered how long ago our mountain was an active volcano. To-day, less than two hundred miles south of here are live peaks, like El Misti and Ubinas, which still smolder occasionally and have been known in the memory of man to give forth great showers of cinders covering a wide area.
No one lives here now, but there are many flocks and llamas, and not far away we saw ancient storehouses and burial places. That night we suffered from intense cold and were kept awake by the bitter wind which swept down from the snow fields of Coropuna and shook the walls of our tent violently. The next day we crossed two small oases, little gulches watered from the melting snow of Coropuna.
Although Coropuna proves to be thirteen hundred feet lower than Bandelier's estimate, and a thousand feet lower than the highest mountain in South America, still it is a thousand feet higher than the highest mountain in North America. While we were glad we were the first to reach the top, we all agreed we would never do it again! To Parinacochas
It is likely ... that Coropuna, in the Peruvian coast range of the Department Arequipa, is the culminating point of the continent. His estimate was based on a survey made by the civil engineers of the Southern Railways of Peru, using a section of the railroad as a base. My sensations when I read this are difficult to describe.
In November Chief Topographer Hendriksen completed his survey and found the latitude of Coropuna to be 15° 31' South, and the longitude to be 72° 42' 40'' West of Greenwich. He computed its altitude to be 21,703 feet above sea level.
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