10th July – Dispatch from Nevado Tolqueri, Cordillera Carabaya, Andes
We have acquired a dog, ¨”Mooch”. Walking back to camp yesterday, amid driving snow and fully laden with rock samples, there he was exploring what passes for our kitchen. Unlike most Andean dogs – ferocious beasts trained to keep geologists from harassing the livestock – this one is a cheerful soul, happy to hang around and be fed whatever is going, and always up for affection. Where he came from we don´t know. We´re camping at 4750 m in a shallow valley between moraines that keeps the worst of the wind at bay.
There is nothing to burn here and so the nights are frigid, though the view of the entire Cordillera Carabaya, as far as Bolivia, is superb. There are a few hardy souls farming alpacas up here, so presumably the canine comes from one of those, but nobody seems to be missing him. Last night he cleaned our plates and pans, as the snow fell all around, and this morning he was still there. I awoke to find Mooch curled up by the stoves, tucked up in a snowy ball. He immediately perked up once I arrived and waited with agreeable patience as we made a sort of rice pudding for breakfast. Then, with breakfast done, he followed Matt and me as we went off to collect a few more samples for surface-exposure dating. It will be sad to leave the pup, but we must head west soon to the desert Andes. And as Kurt noted, a high-altitude dog accustomed to sleep in the snow would hardly fare well in subtropical New York!
A word on the weather here. It´s taken a turn for the worse. We´ve been working on LGM moraines beneath Nevado Tolqueri and have made great strides there, collecting tens of samples from a fantastic sequence of moraines. But a drawn out storm has engulfed us from the east, appearing first as enormous thunder clouds and transitioning into incessant snow and high wind. It´s not quite what we´d expected but what can you do? It´s times like these we wish we had a kitchen tent instead of a patch of open mountain for cooking. It will be interesting to see how far west this system goes. In the meantime, we will try to keep our feet dry and the dog fed.
Gordon
