I am back to reading Echevarria's magnum opus, The Andes: the complete history of mountaineering in high south america. A century before Mount Blanc was climbed, El Misti - over a 1000 meters higher - was climbed by the Spanish conquistadors in Arequipa, Peru. Of course, they found evidence that the Incas had climbed it even a century earlier. Truly, reading this scholarly, and meticulously researched book, makes it clear how Eurocentric our conception mountaineering is.
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