American Alpine Institute Aconcagua Program

Aconcagua Extras: Videos, Books, and Fun Facts

Aconcagua in Popular Culture

For non-climbers, Aconcagua is a somewhat obscure mountain. Unlike Mount Everest or K2, the tallest mountain in the Americas has not seared itself into the public consciousness. But that doesn't mean that it hasn't poked around in popular culture. Cerro Aconcagua has made appearances in a Disney cartoon, a feature length film and in a video game.

In 1942, Disney produced a short cartoon about a small plane that must face "the terrors of Aconcagua." This cartoon, which was originally designed for a Spanish speaking audience was re-dubbed for English speakers. The premiere of the cartoon in the United States was likely the first time that the tallest mountain in the Western Hemisphere was introduced to North Americans on a large scale.

In the cartoon a small plane with the characteristics of a small child is charged with bringing the mail over the Andes. The plane must pass by a very steep looking and angry anthropomorphic Aconcagua. As is the case with all Disney stories, things turn out well for the little plane.

In 1964, a full-length color Argentine adventure movie called Aconcagua made its way to the silver screen. The film was directed by Leo Fleider and written by Norberto Aroldi. Aconcagua started the popoular Argentinean actor, Tito Alonso. The film was distributed by Gloria Films and premiered in Buenos Aires on June 18, 1964. This is a very difficult film to find. And should one find it, it's highly unlikely that it will be subtitled, much less dubbed.

In the year 2000 a Playstation video game entitled Aconcagua was released in Japan. The premise of the game seems to be a mix of Piers Paul Read's book, Alive and Sylvester Stalone's 1993 film, Cliffhanger. So in other words, plane crash survivors in the Andes meet gun-toting maniacs. To see a preview of the video game, please view the following video.

Aconcagua sees thousands of ascents every year and is one of the Seven Summits, the highest points on each of the seven continents. A combination of the popularity of the seven summits and the sheer number of people who have climbed the mountain makes it likely that Aconcagua will have a future in popular culture.

Multi-Media and Videos

There are many ways to descend Aconcagua. Most people choose to walk down. But in March of 2008 Francois Bon chose to take a different route back to the base. The Frenchman chose to "speed ride" back to the base.

Speed riding is a relatively new extreme sport that mixes free skiing with high-speed paragliding. With the descent of Aconcagua, Bon has firmly become the most high profile speed rider in the world. It took him 11 days to summit the mountain and 4 minutes and 50 seconds to descend the south face.

Bon created the video below on his descent: