Ascent to "Minillas" hill. ("Panul" Park), (33° 32' 07'' S;  70° 28' 48'' W )

    Hi, dear readers, today I will write about one ascent I did to one mountain very near to my house in Santiago, the "Minillas" hill.  Although it is not really a hill because it is a mountain in the Central Andes and its elevation is 2467 meters (8093 feet), but if we compare this mountain with other near mountains like "El Plomo" 5424 mt (17795 feet) or "Tupungato" 6570 mt (21555 feet), the "Minillas" would be just a little hill.

How you can see, the Minillas Hill is in La Florida, (Santiago). and it belongs to the first group of mountains of Andes Range beside Santiago, the interesting of this travel is to can be in an mountain environment and in the same time to see all the city from the heights, also it is a good travel for few money, because to arrive to the entrance of the park you only need to take the public bus.
(It is ideal for the people with many wishes to climb a mountain and few time and money). The red line is the normal way to arrive to the summit.

(This is a view of Minillas Hill with a few of snow)

   I did this travel alone in only one day, it was in the beginning of January, in a hot day and I have to say that it is an amazing travel; the place possesses a beauty of arid zone (especially in summer).

From the beginning you will find a sclerophyllous forest (forest of arid zone), where the "Litre" tree is the most abundant species, moreover "Quillay" tree and when you will ascend, you´ll find big cactus and a mysterious plant called "Chagual" (Puya chilensis), which is an odd plant alike to an Aloe with a big trunk.

(This is a very famous tree in the "Panul" park, whose trunk appears to be a skull, and if a don´t mistake this tree is a "Quillay").

(This is the "Chagual" plant, "Puya chilensis", a suicidal plant from Chile)

I say that the Chagual is a suicidal plant because it burns to itself when it is old, it is a very strange event, but if you go to the central Andes or central Coastal Range you will be able to see a lot of these plants burned, but you will see that only they are burned and the surroundings is intact from fire, this strange incident is called "spontaneous combustion". and in this travel I saw many "Chaguales" over the 2.5 meters height completely burned, remaining only a black silhouettes among the rocks. 

I don´t know why but this suicidal behavior of self-burning makes me remember a classical picture of a buddhist monk which burned himself to protest for the pursuit of the buddhists in Vietnam.

(This is the immolation of a buddhist monk in Vietnam in 1963)

(These are the remains of the "self-burned Chagual" plants)

Higher in the mountain there is a rock wall which reaches almost till the summit, I am not sure about the origin of this rock wall but I read that it was built to delimit the fields according to their owners.

("Pircas" or rock walls in the ascent to Minillas hill)

(This is the nocturnal view of Santiago from the summit of Minillas hill)

This was an interesting travel I did, but to climb to the summit in summer is only for braves (because the heat and the lack of water). I hope to climb there again in the winter or spring. Is also somebody interested to climb there????

Goodbye readers, till the next post.

Post Script: none of these pictures is mine, when I traveled to this mountain I didn´t have a camera and I had to use pictures from internet to make this post.

Travel to Calbuco volcano, the first post of my new blog.

Travel to Calbuco volcano ( 41° 19' 58,45" S    72° 36' 50,32" W )

  Hello, dear reader. It has gone by much time since I wrote the last post in my old blog, I don´t know how much time, perhaps a year or a little more, but I want to return to write in a blog because it chills out me and in this moments I need a little of tranquility for my head, for this reason I have decided to create a new blog dedicated to my travels to the natural environments of Chile, and I wanted to begin to write about an amazing travel that I done between the Christmas and the New Year in 2014.

I traveled to Calbuco volcano (a volcano near to Puerto Montt, in the south of Chile), I went with my brother in law (Sebastian Rodriguez) in his car to the "Llanquihue National Park". 

This is a national park which possesses a forest of Nothofagus and Alerces trees, in a cold and rainy environment, and in the middle of the park there is a alone volcano, the Calbuco volcano.

("Region of the Lakes" and Calbuco volcano in the south of Chile)

In the begining of the park the road is gentle, suitable for the most of people who likes the walks for the forest, but soon the road become more interesting for the nature admirers, especially when we arrived to the "Blanco river" which runs above an old solid magma flow, product of some eruption of the Calbuco volcano.

(Here I am beside the Blanco river)

 This river has created beautiful and interesting geomorphological shapes, called Giant's Kettle, how you can see in the next picture. 

(These are tourists doing a sport, which consists in throw themselves to the river in the Giant's Kettle), they looked very happy in the river.  This sport appeared very funny, perhaps someday I´d do it.

This place of the road to the volcano was especially interesting for me because above the solid magma there are trees growing as if they were natural bonsais, growing maximum one meter or a little more, among they there were Lengas, Ñirres and the majestic Alerces. It was nice for me to see how the life is able to repair even a magma flow. The nature never leaves to surprises me.

Soon we entered to a forest of huge trees, Arrayanes, Ñirres, Lengas and the old Alerces.

(Ñirres and Lengas)

(There I am walking to the camp)

   Later, we settle the camp in a wind protected area, surrounded by rocky mountains, which did a kind of funnel for the clouds in the end of the day, creating a kind of fog moved for the wind upwards of the river.

(Fog made for the clouds crashing with the mountains)

(The twilight and the cold forest)

(Our tent and the fog, near to the end of day)

Early in morning we climbed to the volcano, but the ascent was not anything easy, it was a great adventure.

(Clouds crashing against the volcano´s base in the morning, how if they were waves in the sea crashing against a cliff )

(Summit of volcano in the distance)

The ascent to the volcano begins for a forest of different Nothofagus trees, then it starts the bushes in the wind non-protected area, where there are a huge wind blowing. 

In this place there are also a cross remembering to a young boy who died here, and this cross is full of rope pieces tied like if they were gifts from soldiers to a comrade dead in battle.

Soon we arrived to the first snowfield, which was made of firn (hard snow)

But the most thrilling of the day was to cross huge firn field with a steep slope with a final that couldn´t be seen into the distance.

Finally we had to climb a rock walls to arrive almost to the summit of the volcano (15 or 20 meters below the summit), because to arrive till the summit it is necessary to climb for huge firn fields, but using the suitable equipment to walk by the firn and ice (grampons, ice axe, ropes, etc), but it will be for another occasion.

From summit base it is possible to see above the clouds, and to see the Llanquihue lake, the Chapo lake and the sea in front of Puerto Montt, and cities how Puerto Montt, Alerce, Puerto Varas and Llanquihue.

(View from the volcano to horizon)

(My brother in law, Sebastian Rodriguez)

(A picture of me beside the summit)

(Sebastian in the heights)

(The summit of the volcano)

If you liked the travel, you must to go to this place, I recommend you it.

Goodbye reader, till the next post.