TENERIFFE Photo Gallery (Mount Teide)

I'll have to examine old passports to find out the exact date of this, but I have the impression it's sometime in 1986.

A Manchester entrepreneur, by the name of Stuart Littlewood as I recall, asked me to survey Mt. Teide, on Teneriffe, with a view to putting an FM transmitting antenna on the top of it.

This Web site http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/img_tiede.html describes it:

Teide (28.3N, 16.6W) is the third largest volcano on Earth. Like Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea (the first and second largest volcanoes), Teide is a shield volcano. Elevation at the summit of the volcano is 12,188.3 feet (3,715 m). The age of the main subaerial shield phase for Tenerife is about 5 million years. The Las Canadas depression formed by a combination of explosive emptying of a high-level magma chamber and collapse and lateral movement of the summit. The most recent eruption was on the northwest flank of the volcano in 1909.

The site above also has good aerial views of the whole thing.

The summit of Teide is an inhospitable place.
Besides the altitude, which causes oxygen starvation, there's a lot of free sulphur compounds - the volcano is still active at a low level.
If you sit down, you'll lose the seat of your pants, rotted away by acid.

Putting a broadcast antenna on here would be quite a challenge; but think of the potential range of the signal!

I think nearest he camera is Stuart Littlewood, I forget the names of the other two.

Mains electricity is available (to power the funicular) and I think I could get a L.O.S. radio link to work, but the corrosion problem would be pretty serious.