I arrived at the airport in Santiago, Chile and met my friend Eric. I could no thank him enough for the opportunity he gave me as he drove across the beautiful country. After getting dinner, I settled down for night, eagerly awaiting the morning.
 |
| argentinaphotogallery.blogspot.com |
I was woken up at 6:00 AM in the morning by the shake of two hands. Eric insisted we leave early if we wanted to be the only ones on the mountain. The car ride went through old towns and modern cities until the all we could see was forest. We winded through a small dirt road until we came upon them. The Andes. They loomed over us, blotted out the sun and obscuring the clear blue sky.
After checking in with our leader and harnessing our selves into our ropes, we were hoisted up above the ground. My hands gripped the cold stone as I climbed higher and higher into the misty air. I reached the lip of a ledge, and then stopped to rest. Eric came a few minutes after me, panting and sweating through his t-shirt. We sat and ate lunch atop the ledge, eating lunch as I looked out across the teeming landscape.
We climbed for a few more hours before scaling back down the mountain. Overall, this was an excellent day to warup-up my cross-continental journey!
 |
| pubs.usgs.gov |
The Andes were formed through a process called ocean-continent subduction, where and oceanic plate converges with a continental plate. In this process, the denser oceanic plate subducts beneath the less-dense continental plate. Like an ocean-ocean subduction, a deep sea trench is formed, and a mountain chain and volcanoes are formed on the the coast of the overriding continental plate. The Andes are formed as a result of subduction of the Nazca Plate and Antarctic Plate underneath the South American Plate. The results are the Peru-Chile trench, the Andes mountain range, and several areas of volcanic activity.
No comments:
Post a Comment