Osorno Volcano

Few volcanoes on earth come closer to the ideal drawn by a child than Osorno. It rises to 2,652 metres in a cone so regular that it is constantly compared with Mount Fuji, and its upper third wears a permanent cap of ice that stays white even at the end of the southern summer. What makes it unforgettable is its setting: it stands straight out of the water between two great lakes of Chile's Los Lagos region, Llanquihue to the west and Todos los Santos to the east, so that on a still morning the whole white cone is doubled in one or the other.

The perfect cone stands on older foundations: Osorno is a stratovolcano built atop La Picada, a much-eroded volcano some 250,000 years old with a caldera six kilometres wide. Its own history has been restless: about eleven eruptions were recorded between the late sixteenth and the late nineteenth century, and one of them was watched by Charles Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle in January 1835, when the mountain was seen erupting from the coast of Chiloé. Local tradition in the Mapuche world knew it under several names, among them Peripillán, after a powerful spirit of the mountains. The summit was first reached in 1848.

The eastern flank belongs to Vicente Pérez Rosales National Park, created in 1926 as the oldest national park in Chile, which also protects Todos los Santos lake, the jagged horn of Puntiagudo and the western slopes of Tronador. Just below Osorno the Petrohué river pours from Todos los Santos over volcanic rock in the Petrohué falls, where the volcano rises directly above the foaming water — the classic view. From the lakeshore a road climbs to the La Burbuja area, used for skiing in winter and for walks on the upper slopes in summer; the summit itself lies above the ice and is a mountaineering climb.

The ice has been shrinking: in recent decades the glaciers on the northern and western slopes have retreated noticeably, even though the wet maritime climate still feeds them with heavy snow. Seen from the lakeshore, though, the effect is unchanged, and on clear days the cone is visible across the whole of Osorno province and even from parts of Chiloé.

Getting there

The volcano rises on the southeastern shore of Lake Llanquihue, about 46 km from the town of Llanquihue and roughly 45 km northeast of Puerto Varas, the usual base. The nearest airport is El Tepual International Airport (PMC) near Puerto Montt, about 63 km away. From Puerto Varas a lakeshore road runs to Ensenada at the volcano's foot, where one road climbs the flank towards the ski area and the other continues to the Petrohué falls and the landing on Todos los Santos lake. It can also be approached from Puerto Klocker and from the village of Las Cascadas at its base.