It's here--the Blogging from A to Z Challenge kicks off today! Want to know more? Click on the badge. Then enjoy rooting around in hundreds of participating blogs.
I am blogging this year on mountains and valleys. Look for book reviews (adult and children's books), photo essays, and flash fiction, all relating, however tangentially, to mountains and valleys. Or canyons. Maybe depressions and lumps. It's all good, and there will be photos wherever possible.
And now for our first mountain--Alpamayo, in the Peruvian Cordillera Blanca. We visited this area last summer, trekking for 10 days around the Cordillera. Our guide insisted, not implausibly, that Alpamayo is the most beautiful mountain in the world. Or at least Peru. Certainly, it showed us great beauty, despite the harsh conditions at altitude.
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| Our first glimpse of the mountain for which the trek was named. Flirting with the clouds, as is only right at over 19,500'. |
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| Evening brought beautiful light. |
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| And morning another kind of beautiful light--and clear skies. People do climb this, but you won't find me up there! |
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| Clouds move back in as the day progresses, but the scenery is no less interesting. The glacial lake formed behind the moraine is turquoise with glacial silt. |
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| The clouds--or blowing snow? whipping around the edges of the summit pyramid tell me that the wind is fierce. The cornices and fluting tell me that it is relentless, never still at that elevation. Nights are in the 20s (F) at our camp at some 14,0000'. I hate to imagine what it would be like up there. Great natural beauty is often indifferent to our rather puny human existence. |
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