Parinacota

Interesting facts

The flank collapse that created Lake Chungará was roughly three times larger than the famous 1980 sideways collapse of Mount St. Helens.

The shape of the deposit suggests the avalanche raced along at about 25 to 60 metres per second, fast enough to ride up over hills in its path.

Near the foot of the cone lie intact slabs of the old volcano, called Toreva blocks, that slid away almost whole and still stand up to 250 metres high.

Some of the Cotacotani lakes may be kettle holes, formed when blocks of glacier ice carried along inside the avalanche later melted away.

The international border runs along the rim of the summit crater, so the crater itself lies in Bolivia while most of the mountain stands in Chile.

Lake Chungará is home to about 19 species of Orestias pupfish, and the collapse, by splitting old watersheds, helped some of them evolve into separate species.

No river has ever cut through the dam of debris; instead water seeps slowly through the rubble, while evaporation removes nearly five-sixths of what flows into Lake Chungará.

After the collapse the volcano regrew quickly, piling up some 15 cubic kilometres of new lava that erased every trace of the missing flank.

In Aymara tradition Parinacota and Pomerape are unmarried sisters, and several local legends tell of quarrels with the neighbouring mountains Tacora and Sajama.

Parinacota is one of several Chilean volcanoes pictured in the country's passport.

Why it is worth it

Parinacota is the volcano that children draw: a near-perfect cone of snow and dark rock rising to about 6,380 m on the border of Chile and Bolivia. With its older, more eroded twin Pomerape it forms the Nevados de Payachata, and on a still morning the pair are mirrored whole in the dark blue water of Lake Chungará at their foot. The name is Aymara - parina, flamingo, and quta, lake - and flamingos are indeed often on the shallow lagoons of this high altiplano.

The symmetry is deceptive, because Parinacota once lost a whole side of itself. Sometime between about 8,000 and 20,000 years ago its western flank collapsed, sending some 5-6 cubic kilometres of rock racing more than 20 km west across the plateau. The avalanche dammed the drainage and created Lake Chungará, which lies at about 4,517 m, one of the highest large lakes in the world. Its jumbled deposit, a field of hummocks up to 80 m tall, now cradles the Cotacotani lakes, a maze of small pools that feeds the headwaters of the Río Lauca. The cone we see today grew back afterwards, filling the scar.

Parinacota is young and still considered active. Its most recent eruptions date to within the last few centuries, and an Aymara story of a bearded son of the Sun who warned a village of disaster may preserve the memory of one of them. The summit holds a crater about a kilometre wide, and an ice cap still covers the upper slopes, though it has been shrinking steadily since the late twentieth century. The standard ascent is a snow and rock scramble rather than a technical climb, but the altitude makes it a serious undertaking.

The volcano anchors Chile's Lauca National Park, a UNESCO biosphere reserve, where vicuñas, rheas, giant coots and three species of flamingo live on the altiplano; across the border it continues into Bolivia's Sajama region. Much of its appeal is simply the composition - lake, lava hummocks, grazing vicuñas and the white cone above - seen in the thin, sharp light of 4,500 m.

Getting there

The nearest Chilean city is Arica, about 127 km away, with Chacalluta International Airport (ARI) about 128 km in a straight line, about 160 km by road; Tacna in Peru and its airport (TCQ) are at a similar distance. Route 11, the international road from Arica to Bolivia, climbs through Putre and runs along the shore of Lake Chungará, about 51 km beyond Putre and some 190 km from Arica. Putre is the usual base for acclimatising before going higher.

From the encyclopaedia

Parinacota, Parina Quta or Parinaquta is a dormant stratovolcano on the border of Bolivia and Chile. Together with Pomerape it forms the Nevados de Payachata volcanic chain. Part of the Central Volcanic Zone of the Andes, its summit reaches an elevation of 6,380 metres (20,930 ft) above sea level. The symmetrical cone is capped by a summit crater with widths of 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) or 1,000 metres (3,300 ft). Farther down on the southern slopes lie three parasitic centres known as the Ajata cones. These cones have generated lava flows. The volcano overlies a platform formed by lava domes and andesitic lava flows.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Parinacota

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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From the encyclopaedia