Chacaltaya

Chacaltaya (Mollo language for "bridge of winds" or "winds meeting point", Aymara for "cold road"[1]) is a mountain in the Cordillera Real, one of the mountain ranges of the Cordillera Oriental, itself a range of the Bolivian Andes. Its elevation is 5,421 meters (17,785 ft). Chacaltaya's glacier — which was as old as 18,000 years — had an area of 0.22 km2 (0.085 sq mi) in 1940, which had been reduced to 0.01 km2 (0.0039 sq mi) in 2007 and was completely gone by 2009.[2][3][4] Half of the meltdown, as measured by volume, took place before 1980.[5] The final meltdown after 1980, due to missing precipitation and the warm phase of El Niño, resulted in the glacier's disappearance in 2009.[6] The glacier was located about 30 kilometers (19 mi) from La Paz, near Huayna Potosí mountain.

Chacaltaya
Chacaltaya peak, October 2012
Highest point
Elevation5,421 m (17,785 ft)
Coordinates16°21′12″S 68°07′53″W 
Geography
Chacaltaya
Location of Chacaltaya in Bolivia
LocationLa Paz Department, Bolivia
Parent rangeCordillera Real, Andes
Geology
Mountain typeFold mountain
Climbing
Easiest routeWalk up

Ski area
Enhanced image of Chacaltaya ski resort, November 2007

The glacier on Chacaltaya served as Bolivia's only ski resort. It was the world's highest lift-served ski area and the northernmost in South America as well as the world's second most equatorial after Maoke, Indonesia. The rope tow, the very first in South America, was built in 1939 using an automobile engine; it was housed in the site's original clapboard lodge, and is now inoperable. The road to the base of the 200-meter (660 ft) drop is reached by a narrow road, also built in the 1930s. Traditionally, due to the extreme cold weather, the lift operated exclusively on weekends from November to March. Since 2009, skiing is restricted to a 600-foot (180 m) stretch that sometimes receives sufficient snowfall for a run during the winter.[3][7] The mountain is also popular with amateur mountaineers, as the road stops only 200 metres (660 ft) from the summit. Guinness World Records considers the ski resort restaurant to be the highest restaurant in the world.[8]

Retreat of Chacaltaya glacier
View of Chacaltaya glacier, May 2005

Scientists at the Mount Chacaltaya Laboratory started measuring the Chacaltaya glacier in the 1990s. Predicted at that time to survive until 2015, the glacier melted at a faster rate than expected. By 2009, it had been reduced to a few small patches of ice and snow near the top of the mountain.[4][9]

Many Bolivians on the Altiplano and in two of Bolivia's main cities — La Paz and El Alto — depend on melt water from Andean glaciers for part of their water supply during the dry season. The World Bank has warned that many glaciers in the tropical portion of the Andes are expected to disappear within 20 years. This will threaten the water supplies of nearly 80 million people as well as the future generation of hydropower. Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru depend on hydropower for about half their electricity.[4]

Observatory
The automatic weather station located in the northwestern ridge of Mount Chacaltaya, Bolivia. It is one of the highest in the country, located at 5380 m above sea level. Until 1952 the station belonged to the Bolivia's National Meteorological Service but since that date it belongs to the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés.

Located at 5,240 meters (17,190 ft), the Mount Chacaltaya Laboratory began as a weather station in 1942.[10] It is an important site for gamma ray research [11] and was the site in the 1940s of the first observations of pions.

Chacaltaya Observatory, March 2011

The Chacaltaya (Astrophysical) Observatory belongs to the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés and it is operated in collaboration with other universities worldwide. It hosts a cosmic ray research group, and since 2011 the Chacaltaya Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) station. The GAW station is one of the few monitoring sites of Essential Climate Variables (meteorological variables, aerosols, and greenhouse gases) in the Southern Hemisphere.

Climate
Climate data for Chacaltaya 1952-1997
Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Year
Record high °C (°F) 8.0
(46.4)		 10.5
(50.9)		 12.0
(53.6)		 8.3
(46.9)		 8.5
(47.3)		 7.7
(45.9)		 6.5
(43.7)		 9.7
(49.5)		 6.9
(44.4)		 11.0
(51.8)		 10.1
(50.2)		 10.0
(50.0)		 12.0
(53.6)
Average high °C (°F) 2.3
(36.1)		 2.3
(36.1)		 2.5
(36.5)		 2.5
(36.5)		 2.3
(36.1)		 1.4
(34.5)		 1.6
(34.9)		 2.2
(36.0)		 1.9
(35.4)		 2.9
(37.2)		 3.1
(37.6)		 2.8
(37.0)		 2.3
(36.2)
Average low °C (°F) −3.3
(26.1)		 −3.7
(25.3)		 −3.7
(25.3)		 −3.8
(25.2)		 −4.9
(23.2)		 −6.3
(20.7)		 −6.5
(20.3)		 −5.9
(21.4)		 −5.4
(22.3)		 −4.3
(24.3)		 −3.9
(25.0)		 −3.6
(25.5)		 −4.6
(23.7)
Record low °C (°F) −13.7
(7.3)		 −12.5
(9.5)		 −15.0
(5.0)		 −8.7
(16.3)		 −13.4
(7.9)		 −13.8
(7.2)		 −12.9
(8.8)		 −13.5
(7.7)		 −15.9
(3.4)		 −13.6
(7.5)		 −12.6
(9.3)		 −11.6
(11.1)		 −15.9
(3.4)
Average precipitation mm (inches) 105.4
(4.15)		 81.5
(3.21)		 70.2
(2.76)		 31.7
(1.25)		 13.9
(0.55)		 6.8
(0.27)		 6.9
(0.27)		 10.0
(0.39)		 27.7
(1.09)		 34.2
(1.35)		 51.9
(2.04)		 77.8
(3.06)		 518
(20.39)
Source: [12]

See also

References
  1. Enders, John (May 2009). "Bolivia's Chacaltaya glacier is gone". Miami Herald. Retrieved 2015-09-18 – via McClatchy DC.
  2. "Vanishing Bolivian Glacier Ends Highest Ski Run (Update1)". Bloomberg. 2009-08-05.
  3. "Farewell to a melting glacier". BBC News. 2007-04-03. Retrieved 2007-07-13.
  4. Painter, James (2009-05-12). "Huge Bolivian glacier disappears". BBC New. Retrieved 2015-06-24.
  5. Francou, Bernard; Ramirez, Edson; Cáceres, Bolivar; Mendoza, Javier (November 2000). "Glacier Evolution in the Tropical Andes during the Last Decades of the 20th Century: Chacaltaya, Bolivia, and Antizana, Ecuador". AMBIO. 29: 416. ISSN 0044-7447. JSTOR 4315067.
  6. Rosenthal, Elisabeth (2009-12-13). "In Bolivia, Water and Ice Tell of Climate Change". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-09-28.
  7. Romero, Simon (2007-02-02). "Bolivia's Only Ski Resort Is Facing a Snowless Future". Chacaltaya Journal. The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-05-10.
  8. "Highest restaurant". Guinness World Records. Retrieved 20 November 2017.
  9. "Chacaltaya, Bolivia: How the world's highest ski resort disappeared". The Whiteroom. 5 June 2017. Archived from the original on 30 December 2019. (Diagram and photos of development)
  10. Zaratti, Francesco (2009). "The Mount Chacaltaya Laboratory: Past, present, and future" (PDF). La Paz, Bolivia: Atmospheric Physics Laboratory. Retrieved 2011-04-19.
  11. Wamsteker, W.; Albrecht, Rudolf; Haubold, Hans J. (2004). Developing basic space science world-wide: a decade of UN/ESA workshops. Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4020-2519-8. OCLC 56105246.
  12. Francou, B.; Ramírez, E.; Mendoza, J.; Guereca, J.; Miranda, E.; Noriega, G. (1998). "El glaciar de Chacaltaya (Cordillera Real, Bolivia): Investigaciones glaciológicas (1991-1997)" [The Chacaltaya Glacier (Cordillera Real, Bolivia): Glaciological Investigations (1991-1997)] (PDF). Instituto de Investigación para el Desarrollo (IRD) (in Spanish). 56: 98. Retrieved March 13, 2019.
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