The pass of the Cumbre is one of the most dangerous passes because of its fearful storms. Every few miles there are the dome-shaped casuchas, which have been built for shelter, with their doorways perched up high above the ground as a precaution against being snowed under. In one of the most dangerous parts is a little graveyard by the roadside, with numerous little wooden crosses in various stages of decay which bear eloquent testimony to the toll which has been demanded by the storm king.
The arrieros, or mule drivers, that one may engage, never set foot on the ground if they can avoid it. It would, I suppose, be a loss of caste to walk, and they would rather ride their horses over a precipice than humiliate themselves by getting off and walking. The general appearance of these arrieros is decidedly picturesque, is certainly distinctive and gives them a rather striking appearance. They ride an old-fashioned Mexican saddle with a number of sheepskins strapped over the top of it. They generally have their feet encased in soft slippers made of a square piece of rawhide strapped on the foot by leather thongs, which would certainly make walking over stones decidedly uncomfortable. They are fond of silver trappings and gaudy accoutrements, and the more jingling these accessories make the better pleased is the rider, for he declares that this noise encourages the animals.
Aconcagua is distant a dozen miles from the Cumbre. The ascent of this peak has been made up a valley which runs over toward it. Vegetation gradually disappears on the upward journey, and the most of the streams contain water unfit to drink. Soon the giant cliffs and crags of Aconcagua tower over the traveller, a great mass of rock rising like the battlements of some stupendous castle. Its vast proportions are bewildering to the pygmy onlooker. Amidst this amphitheatre of peaks and valleys it would seem was the arena of one of the early-world dramas ages and ages ago. The cold becomes greater and more acute as more lofty heights are reached, especially so just before daybreak. The wind is biting. The loose round stones make a footing difficult. What looks like a mere step from one part of the mountain to another often means hours of toil to the venturesome climber.
One writer says: “The sight that met my gaze was an astounding one. An immense glacier separated us from the glacier below—the difference between twenty-three thousand feet and thirteen thousand feet. It was a precipice of gigantic size. As I looked down its dizzy sides, I saw spurs of the mountain flanking the glaciers beneath to the left and right, giving the appearance of some huge amphitheatre. The sun was low in the heavens, and did not penetrate into the vast pit, and the great masses of vapour slowly moving about in it far below, gave it the aspect of a giant cauldron, into whose depths the eye failed to penetrate, two miles vertically below. The arete, about five feet wide at this point, ran east to the summit and west to the snow-clad western peak of the mountain, growing ever narrower in that direction, until, where it sloped up to the highest point, its edge became knife-like.”
In “The Highest Andes,” by E. A. Fitzgerald, the following description is given of the summit of Aconcagua. “Over Argentinian territory range beyond range stretched away; coloured slopes of red, brown and yellow, peaks and crags capped with fresh-fallen snow. I had hoped to look down upon the pampas of Argentina. In this I was disappointed for, though I gazed down over the range, a sea of mountains some sixty miles in width, and averaging a height of quite thirteen thousand feet, made such a view impossible. Away over the surging mass of white cloud that lay on the glacier at my feet rose the southern frontier chain. Torlosa and the Twins, on either side of the Cumbre Pass, stood like colossal sentinels guarding the great highway between the two republics; then there were the lofty glaciers lying between the rugged crags of Juncal, the ice peaks of Navarro and Pollera, the Leones and the Cerro del Plomo, that overhangs the city of Santiago, Chile, and some sixty miles farther on the magnificent white summit of Tupungato.
“No lens or pen can depict the view from the Chilean side. I looked down the great waste, past the western peak of the mountain to right and left, over ranges that dwindled in height as they neared the coast to where, a hundred miles away, the blue expanse of the Pacific glittered in the evening sun. The sun lay low on the horizon, and the whole surface of the ocean within the points of vision was diffused with a blood-red glow. The shimmering of the light on the water could be distinctly seen. So near did it seem that I could not realize the immense distance that separated one from it.
“All the forces of nature had been brought to bear upon this mountain giant. Visible signs lay around one of the power of the weather and rapid changes of temperature to destroy. Aconcagua, with all its cherished secrets and its mystery, lay here before one, confessing itself as nothing more than a colossal ruin, for not a single vestige of the ancient crater of this extinct volcano remains. Foot by foot the relentless forces of nature have reduced the mountain to its present proportions. The innumerable traces of ruin and decay around one, the crumbling rocks and the disappearance of the crater told of an Aconcagua of the past, whose gigantic base filled the glacier-beds around, whose sides rose towering to the heavens several thousand feet higher than the Aconcagua of to-day; of an Aconcagua of ages yet unborn, split, broken and powdered by frost and heat, pouring itself over valleys and plains in sediment and shingle, a mere shapeless mass whose height will no longer distress the mountaineer.
“I looked at the time. It was twenty minutes past six. The sun, a great ball of blood-red fire in a cloudless sky, was dipping into the waters of the Pacific. Rapidly it sank and disappeared from view, yet, as if struggling for supremacy with the fast-approaching night, an afterglow of surpassing beauty spread over land and sea in a series of magnificent changes of colour. The mighty expanse of water from north to south, together with the sky above it, was diffused with a fiery, red glow. While the red in the sky remained, the waters, through a variety of intermediate shades of colouring, turned slowly to purple and then to blue. And yet we were not in darkness, for with the sun’s departure the risen moon declared itself with wondrous brightness, penetrating the thin atmosphere and flooding everything with its colder light.”