Pico de Malpaso (English: "difficult step peak") is the highest point on the island of
El Hierro in the
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands (; ) or Canaries are an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean and the southernmost Autonomous communities of Spain, Autonomous Community of Spain. They are located in the northwest of Africa, with the closest point to the cont ...
,
Spain
Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...
.
Geography
The summit rises at the centre of the island on the border between
Frontera and
El Pinar de El Hierro municipalities
A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate.
The term ''municipality' ...
(
Province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife
Province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, also Province of Santa Cruz (), is a province of Spain, consisting of the western part of the autonomous community of the Canary Islands. It consists of about half of the Atlantic archipelago: the islands o ...
).
On the mountain's top, at an elevation of 1,501.762 m above sea level, is located a
trig point
A triangulation station, also known as a trigonometrical point, and sometimes informally as a trig, is a fixed surveying station, used in geodetic surveying and other surveying projects in its vicinity.
The station is usually set up by a map ...
.
From the mountain one can see the island of
La Palma
La Palma (, ), also known as ''La isla bonita'' () and historically San Miguel de La Palma, is the most northwesterly island of the Canary Islands, a Spanish autonomous community and archipelago in Macaronesia in the North Atlantic Ocean. La Pa ...
and others islands of Canary archipelago.
Geology
The island of
El Hierro is the youngest of the
archipelago
An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands. An archipelago may be in an ocean, a sea, or a smaller body of water. Example archipelagos include the Aegean Islands (the o ...
and is around 3 million years old. Its present shape is derived from the
erosion
Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as Surface runoff, water flow or wind) that removes soil, Rock (geology), rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust#Crust, Earth's crust and then sediment transport, tran ...
on its volcanic cone.
Environment
Malpaso slopes host woods and
heath
A heath () is a shrubland habitat found mainly on free-draining infertile, acidic soils and is characterised by open, low-growing woody vegetation. Moorland is generally related to high-ground heaths with—especially in Great Britain—a coole ...
s with relevant samples of Canary Islands juniper (
Juniperus cedrus), some of them said to be more than one thousand years old. The most important animal from a conservationist point of view is
El Hierro giant lizard (
in Spanish ''lagarto Salmor''), an endangered species of reptile.
See also
*
List of European ultra prominent peaks
This is a list of all the mountains in Europe with ultra-prominent peaks with topographic prominence greater than .
European peaks by prominence
The column "Col" in the chart below denotes the highest elevation to which one must descend from a p ...
References
Bibliography
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Malpaso, Pico de
El Hierro
Mountains of the Canary Islands
Volcanoes of the Canary Islands
One-thousanders of Spain