Field Note 003 / Cotopaxi, Ecuador

Cotopaxi

The giant of ice and fire

31 December 2024 – 1 January 2025Expedition with Tommaso Bruno, Umberto Pernice and Marco Aza

Three climbers on a ridge of snow, with tracks and long shadows above the cloud on Cotopaxi. — Fig. 01 Three climbers on a snow ridge. Tracks and long shadows mark the surface above the cloud.

Three figures cross a ridge of snow. Their jackets register as small marks of colour against the blue, while the tracks behind them give the slope a human measure. Above the cloud, there is little in the frame to suggest how far the mountain extends below.

This is Cotopaxi, in Ecuador, during an expedition with Tommaso Bruno, Umberto Pernice and Marco Aza on 31 December 2024 and 1 January 2025. The dates put the journey on a familiar boundary. The photographs follow another: from volcanic rock to glacier, from the concentrated light of a headlamp to the broad light of morning.

The glacier and the volcano

Cotopaxi rises to about 5,900 metres in Ecuador's Cordillera Real, southeast of Quito. It is an active stratovolcano, a steep cone carrying a glacier close to the equator. [1] Cloud hides and exposes the upper slopes. Where the white cover breaks, bands of dark rock become visible.

Ice and volcanic heat meet here in a physical sense. During major eruptions, hot material can melt glacier ice and generate lahars: flows of water, rock and debris that travel down the valleys. In 1877, such flows reached far beyond the mountain itself. [1, 2] The ice belongs to the volcano's history as much as the rock beneath it.

The expedition took place after the eruptive period of 2022-2023. [1, 2] That recent history gives the cold surface another depth. The snow in these photographs covers a mountain whose form has been built, and repeatedly altered, by volcanic activity.

Locator map of mainland Ecuador, showing Cotopaxi south of the equator, with Colombia, Peru and the Pacific Ocean for orientation. — Fig. 02 Cotopaxi in mainland Ecuador. Volcano reference point from IG-EPN; country boundaries generalized from Natural Earth. [1, 3]

Place: Cotopaxi, Ecuador
Field dates: 31 December 2024 / 1 January 2025
Mountain range: Cordillera Real, Andes
Reference elevation: 5,897 m (IG-EPN) [1]
Volcano position: 0.683°S, 78.436°W [1]
Record: Photography / expedition

The upper slopes of Cotopaxi partly hidden by cloud, with snow and bands of dark rock visible. — Fig. 03 Cloud around the upper slopes of Cotopaxi, revealing bands of rock and the white cover above.

The hours before light

In the night photographs, the frame contracts around what the lamps can reach. A helmet, a face and the edge of a jacket stand out; the slope and the space beyond it fall away. One image keeps little more than a flare of white light and a blurred figure. Its uncertainty belongs to the sequence as much as the clarity of the later views.

Then a thin orange band appears above the cloud. Two climbers fill the foreground, with rope, harnesses and layers of clothing visible against the returning horizon. The mountain begins to acquire distance again. Before the wide views, there are people close enough to the camera for a glance or a gesture to matter. The larger landscape arrives around them.

A climber wearing an orange helmet and a headlamp, photographed against the night. — Fig. 04 A face, helmet and headlamp against the darkness.

A blurred climber in darkness with a headlamp flaring towards the camera. — Fig. 05 A headlamp flares in the frame; the climber remains partly blurred.

Two climbers wearing helmets and harnesses, with the first light above the cloud behind them. — Fig. 06 Two climbers with a narrow band of light above the cloud.

Reading the glacier

Blue snow, hollows and overhanging ice on the glacier of Cotopaxi. — Fig. 07 Snow and exposed ice form ridges, hollows and overhanging edges on the glacier.

Three climbers linked by a rope on a snow slope beneath exposed rock. — Fig. 08 A rope team crossing a snow slope beneath exposed rock.

From below, the glacier can appear to be a single white surface. At closer range, it separates into ridges, openings and overhanging edges. Blue shadow gives depth to the hollows; snow rounds some forms and leaves others sharply exposed.

A photograph without people asks the eye to find its own measure. An ice wall may be near or far, modest or enormous. In the next frame, a rope team crosses below a band of rock, and the bodies restore a sense of distance. What looked like a surface becomes terrain.

The route through these photographs is visible in fragments. Footprints bend across a slope; a rope draws a fine line between figures; an opening interrupts the snow. The mountain's broad outline remains simple enough to recognise from afar, while every close view offers a different shape to read.

The scale of a person

A climber following footprints above a bank of cloud, with a rope running towards the camera. — Fig. 09 A climber follows footprints above the cloud, with the rope extending towards the camera.

The strongest sense of height comes from what lies behind the climbers. In one frame, a person follows a narrow line of footprints above a bank of cloud. A rope runs back towards the camera, linking the figure to the place from which we are looking. The horizon is pale, the snow still blue.

Elsewhere, two climbers stand together beneath a dark rock face edged with ice. Helmets, hoods, harnesses and gloves break up the white of the slope. These small, ordinary details keep the account close to the people who made the journey.

The mountain is immense, but the photographs keep returning to the distance between one person and another. A figure seen from behind, a face turned towards the lens, a raised hand: each gives the landscape a different point of reference. Together, they make a record of company as well as terrain.

Two climbers standing on snow beneath a rock face edged with ice. — Fig. 10 Two climbers on the snow, beneath a rock face fringed with ice.

Across the year

A climber wearing an orange helmet standing among loose volcanic rocks. — Fig. 11 A climber on loose volcanic ground. The photographic sequence returns to rock.

The sequence closes on exposed ground. A climber stands among loose rock, with the bright colour of a helmet carrying something of the glacier images into a different landscape. Snow has given way to a rough, broken surface.

An expedition that crosses New Year invites a story about beginnings. Here, the photographs offer a more particular record: faces in darkness, a horizon returning, a rope across snow, stone underfoot. They give the two dates a texture that the calendar cannot.

Cotopaxi holds the longer timescale. Its glacier and volcanic structure belong to processes that extend beyond any visit. The record of 31 December 2024 and 1 January 2025 stays close to a brief encounter: people moving through a mountain much larger than the view from any one position.

Download Field Note PDF · 6 pages

Expedition

Tommaso Bruno
Umberto Pernice
Marco Aza

Cotopaxi, Ecuador
31 December 2024 / 1 January 2025.

Photographic archive

Tommaso Bruno / The Field Witness Society

Sources and editorial note

[1] Instituto Geofísico, Escuela Politécnica Nacional. Cotopaxi: volcano profile, geographical reference data and eruptive history.
[2] Smithsonian Institution, Global Volcanism Program. Cotopaxi, volcano 352050: geological summary and eruptive history.
[3] Natural Earth. Admin 0 - Countries, 1:110m. Locator map base.

Sources accessed 15 September 2026. Elevation and coordinates are volcano reference data. The map locates the mountain.

Field dates and expedition participants supplied by Tommaso Bruno. Photographs arranged as an editorial sequence.