Huascarán National Park

Listen first. Up here, the air is thin and cold, and the wind carries a dry, clean smell of stone and ice. Somewhere above you, a glacier creaks as it shifts in the sun. Water runs everywhere, in thin silver threads down the rock, and in streams so clear you can count the pebbles on the bottom. Each breath feels a little shorter than it should. That is the altitude. You are standing inside one of the highest mountain landscapes on Earth.

This is Huascarán National Park, in the Áncash region of northern Peru. It protects most of the Cordillera Blanca, the White Range. The name is simple and exact: this is a long chain of snow-covered peaks that runs roughly north to south for well over a hundred kilometres. Peru created the park in 1975. In 1985, UNESCO added it to the World Heritage List for its natural value. That means it is recognised as a landscape of importance to the whole world.

Here is the first surprise. The Cordillera Blanca is the highest mountain range in the tropics. You are not far south of the equator. On the coast, a few hours away, there is desert and warm sea. Yet here the peaks carry permanent ice. Scientists consider this range home to one of the largest areas of tropical glaciers anywhere. Tropical glaciers are rare, and they are sensitive. They react quickly to small changes in temperature, so they work like a thermometer for the planet.

The park takes its name from Huascarán itself, the tallest mountain in Peru. Its southern summit rises to roughly 6,750 metres above sea level. The mountain has two main summits, north and south, joined by a high saddle of snow. On a clear morning, you can see its broad white shoulders from the valley towns below. Local people do not need a map to find it. It fills the eastern sky.

But this mountain also carries a heavy memory. On 31 May 1970, a powerful earthquake struck this part of Peru. The shaking broke loose a huge mass of ice and rock from the north face of Huascarán. It fell and became a fast-moving flow of mud and boulders. Within minutes it reached the town of Yungay, in the valley below, and buried it. Thousands of people died. Today, the old site of Yungay is a quiet memorial, with gardens growing over the ground where the town once stood.

That event explains something you may notice in the valleys. People here watch the mountains with respect, and with care. The glaciers feed many lakes, and some lakes sit behind natural walls of loose rock left by retreating ice. If a wall fails, water can rush down without warning. Over the decades, engineers have worked to lower and drain some of the most dangerous lakes. The beauty of the place and its risks belong to the same story.

Now look at the lakes themselves. The park holds hundreds of them, and many shine a colour that seems almost unreal. Turquoise. Milky blue. Deep emerald. The colour comes from very fine rock dust, ground down by the glaciers and carried in the meltwater. This dust hangs in the water and scatters sunlight. The Llanganuco lakes, in a deep valley below Huascarán, are among the easiest to reach. Laguna 69, a longer and harder hike, sits right beneath a hanging glacier and a waterfall.

Here is the second surprise, and it is a plant. In parts of the park grows the Puya raimondii, sometimes called the Queen of the Andes. It is a relative of the pineapple, but it looks like a giant spiky ball of leaves on a short trunk. It can live for many decades before it flowers. When it finally blooms, it sends up a tall stalk covered in thousands of small flowers. Then, after this single great effort, the whole plant dies.

The animals here are shy, so move slowly and keep your eyes open. Andean condors ride the warm air above the ridges, and their wings look wide and flat against the sky. Vicuñas, the slender wild cousins of the llama, graze in the high grasslands. The spectacled bear, the only bear native to South America, lives in the park too, though few visitors ever see one. In sheltered valleys, look for small forests of twisted, red-barked queñua trees, which grow higher than almost any other trees in the world.

People have lived in these valleys for thousands of years. Many families in the surrounding communities speak Quechua, the Indigenous language of the Andes, as well as Spanish. You may pass small fields of potatoes and grain on the lower slopes, or herders walking cattle and sheep along a trail. Women in bright layered skirts and wide hats sometimes sell woven goods or snacks near trailheads. This is a working landscape, not an empty one, and the park exists alongside the people who call it home.

The town of Huaraz, down in the main valley, is the usual gateway. It sits at about 3,000 metres, so many travellers spend a few days there to adjust before going higher. From Huaraz, roads climb into side valleys called quebradas. Each one leads toward a different lake, glacier, or mountain pass. Climbers come for peaks like Alpamayo, a sharp pyramid of ice that photographers and mountaineers admire. Walkers come for routes that last a morning, or a week.

The glaciers are shrinking, and this is visible. At Pastoruri, in the south of the park, visitors once walked close to a broad wall of ice. Over recent decades, the ice has retreated a long way uphill. The route there now teaches visitors about climate change, with bare rock showing where the glacier used to be. For the towns below, this matters directly. Glacier meltwater helps feed rivers and farms during the dry season. When the ice is gone, that steady supply goes too.

So take a moment before you move on. Look up at the line where the dark rock meets the white ice, and remember that this line is moving, slowly, year by year. Listen again to the water running past your feet. It began as snow on those peaks above you. As you walk away, notice how the light changes on the summits as the clouds pass, from bright white to soft grey and back again. The mountain looks still. It is not.