Cotopaxi rises 5,897 metres above the Avenue of Volcanoes, a near-perfect cone that has erupted more than fifty times since 1738.
The stratovolcano anchors Ecuador's oldest continental national park, established in 1975 across 33,393 hectares of páramo grassland, glacial meltwater streams, and Andean pine plantations introduced in the 1980s. Alexander von Humboldt sketched its symmetry in 1802; Simón Bolívar's troops camped on its lower flanks during the wars of independence. The name derives from Quechua — koto meaning neck, paksi meaning moon — though colonial Spanish chronicles recorded it as Cotopaxi by 1534.
Today the park welcomes trekkers who follow graded trails from the Area Nacional de Recreación El Boliche entrance at 3,400 metres to the José Rivas Refuge at 4,864 metres. The Limpiopungo Lagoon trail loops three kilometres across cushion-plant wetlands where Andean gulls and carunculated caracaras forage. Wild horses descended from hacienda stock graze the tussock grass. Alpacas reintroduced in the 1990s cluster near the Mariscal Sucre museum, a stone lodge built in 1937 as a mountaineering base. Cotopaxi national park hiking tours typically combine the refuge ascent with visits to Quilotoa, a water-filled caldera 60 kilometres south, or extend into multi-day acclimatisation circuits for summit attempts. Guided Andean hiking adventures depart Quito before dawn to reach the park's north gate by eight o'clock, when the glacier remains visible.
The volcano's glacial cap has receded 30 per cent since 1976. Scientists from the Instituto Geofísico monitor seismic tremors through a network installed after the 2015 eruption, which closed the park for five months and deposited ash across Latacunga. The refuge hike gains 1,100 metres over unstable scree; crampons and ice axes are mandatory above 5,000 metres. Non-technical trekkers navigate páramo routes where Chuquiraga shrubs bloom orange in the dry season and spectacled bears leave claw marks on polylepis trees. The park's elevation — base camp sits higher than Mont Blanc's summit — demands slow pacing. Registration at the gate records every entry; rangers require passport details and departure times. Cotopaxi remains active, its fumaroles visible from the refuge on clear mornings when the Pacific wind has not yet carried cloud across the cordillera.
9 hr
