QUITO (AFP) – Ecuador’s last mountain ice harvester, Baltazar Ushca, who spent over half a century climbing the country’s highest summit to extract ice at the top, died on Friday at the age of 80, authorities in his hometown of Guano said.
Ushca was a legend in the Andean country and beyond, as the last practitioner of the age-old profession of ice harvester on Mount Chimborazo, a dormant volcano 6,310 metres high.
“We deeply regret to announce the death of our dear Mashi, Taita Baltazar Ushca, the last iceman of the majestic Chimborazo, a national and international icon,” the municipality of Guano in central Ecuador wrote on social media. In the Quechua language “Taita” means companion and father.
Ushca died after suffering a bad fall while herding cattle at home on Thursday.
The municipality said a bull “overpowered him and threw him to the ground, causing him serious injury.”
Ushca inherited his trade from his father when he was 15 years old and never looked back.
Twice a week he climbed to the 5,200-meter mark on Chimborazo to extract huge blocks of ice weighing up to 20 kilograms with a pick and shovel.
He then wrapped the ice in hay and sold it on a market in the city of Riobamba.
The arrival of refrigerators sounded the death knell for icemen, but Ushca kept plying his trade, inspiring several documentaries.
At 73 years old, he returned to the classroom to complete his primary education and in 2017 received an honorary doctorate.
At the end of his life, he worked as a tourism promoter at Guano museum.
“His work is and will remain a reference for the knowledge of our people,” the National Institute of Cultural Heritage (INPC) wrote on the social network X.
