Monte San Valentin, also known as Monte San Clemente, is the highest mountain in

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the eas ...

Patagonia Patagonia () refers to a geographical region that encompasses the southern end of South America, governed by Argentina and Chile. The region comprises the southern section of the Andes Mountains with lakes, fjords, temperate rainforests, and ...

and the highest mountain south of 37°S outside Antarctica. It stands at the north end of the North Patagonian Icefield. Monte San Valentin can be climbed from Lago Leones, to the south east, or from

Laguna San Rafael San Rafael Lake is an arc-shaped coastal lake located in the Aysén del General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo Region of Chile, within the national park that bears its name. To the north the lagoon is connected to the Moraleda Channel, to the south l ...

, to the west. The ascent is long and is particularly subject to bad weather. The accident and fatality rate is high. There is some confusion about the elevation. It was originally estimated at 3,876m by Nordenskjold in 1921 but later thought to be 4,058m. The latter is the most commonly quoted elevation and is quoted here. A French group that climbed the San Valentin in 1993 included two surveyors, who calculated an elevation of 4,080±20 m by using a

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite sy ...

. In 2001 a Chilean group measured 4,070±40 m, also using GPS.

SRTM The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) is an international research effort that obtained digital elevation models on a near-global scale from 56°S to 60°N, to generate the most complete high-resolution digital topographic database of Ear ...

and

ASTER GDEM The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is a Japanese remote sensing instrument onboard the Terra satellite launched by NASA in 1999. It has been collecting data since February 2000. ASTER provides high-res ...

data also support an elevation in excess of 4,000 metres. However, Chilean IGM mapping gives only 3,910 metres. ChIGM maps are usually accurate and reliable, but the summit is uniformly white, which may have created problems for the cartographers. Monte San Valentín aerial

Notes

References

*John Biggar, ''The Andes, A Guide for Climbers'', Andes, 3rd edition, 2005,

External links

Close-up photo
an

el monte de sanvalentin es muy amoroso Mountains of Aysén Region {{Aisén-geo-stub

See also

Notes

References

External links