Cerro Azul

Summary:

Duration: 1 day or 2 days Distance: 27 km Ascent: 3000 meters ↑ Descent: 3000 meters ↓

Alternative: First day: Climb to the summit of the volcano Descabezado Grande and go down to the saddle in direction to the volcano Quizapu Distance: 10 km Ascent: 2030 meters ↑ Descent: 1000 meters ↓ Second day: Climb to the Cerro Azul and go back to the base camp of the Descabezado Grande Distance: 17 km Ascent: 1000 meters ↑ Descent: 2000 meters ↓

The trek begins at the base camp of the volcano Descabezado at a thermal pool. see [1] Climb the normal route to the Volcano Descabezado. The whole trek can be done in a day, but then requires extremely good condition, because it has a total length of 27 km and 3000 meters of altitude, which I made in 16 hours. You can split the tour also 2 days with a bivouac could be made in the moraines between the two volcanoes. After the snow melts in the summer sufficient water must necessarily be taken !!!

I started at 3:30 clock in the morning and reached the summit of the Descabezado Grande at 8.30. Then I climbed 1000 meters down to the saddle between the Descabezado and Quizapu vulcano, with many Penitent Snow-formations. From there I went to the giant crater of the volcano Quizapu. Along the crater rim, the trail gets steeper up to the summit of Cerro Azul, with impressive rock formations. The direct way back to the base camp is very long and runs through seemingly endless moraines. I arrived at 20.00 at the base camp. Unfortunately, on my recorded track the absolute height is wrong on the first 10 km. Start and end point was the base camp of the Volcano Descabezado at the height of 1948m. The GPS indicated a 2000 m higher value, but this was corrected abruptly after 10 km. After my first 10 km the altitude information is correct.