18 January 2023
I’m looking back now to try to fill in some holes before we head off to Chiquitanía, the eastern part of the country we meant to begin with before the Santa Cruz blockades began. One of the large events that I’ve not remarked on in this blog was our visit to Chacaltaya mountain, research station, and ski resort.
Until the early 2000s, Chacaltaya boasted a working ski resort based on the glacier that filled a stone basin. A ski lift took skiers to the top and back up from the bottom, with the Club Andino Boliviano sponsoring the resort. The clubhouse is still there, perched dramatically on the cliff, but the glacier’s last dregs disappeared around 2009 after a shockingly fast disappearing act.
This was probably one of the highest ski resorts in the world, with the top of the mountain at 17,400 feet. Some of us walked up the former tow-rope ridge to get there, and I for one felt the elevation in the struggling of my lungs!
A research station sill exists at Chacaltaya, taking advantage of the thin atmosphere at such high elevation (at 17,000 feet only half as much air pressure pushes on you as at sea level), and the director of the station, Mirko, gave us a guided tour of their projects. Much of the work is astrophysics, subatomic particle detection, and cosmic radiation. But some also deals with tracking the gases responsible for the greenhouse effect and climate change.
From this high point, the next day we flew down to Rurrenabaque, Madidi National Park, and the Madidi Jungle Lodge (elevation 800 feet). It was quite a change!