Laguna 69
A turquoise lake at 15,090 feet, under a two-thousand-foot ice wall.
Duration
7 hrs – 9 hrs
Difficulty
●●●●●
Best time
Dry season, May to September
Open
Every day
Entry price
To confirm
Laguna 69 sits at four thousand six hundred metres in Huascarán national park, beneath the wall of Chacraraju. Its name comes from an inventory: the park's lakes were numbered when it was designated, and this one was sixty-nine.
The turquoise comes from suspended rock flour. The hike is thirteen kilometres return for six hundred metres of climb — modest anywhere else, but altitude changes everything: at four thousand six hundred metres the air holds about half the oxygen of sea level.
Getting there
Three hours by road from Huaraz to the trailhead at Cebollapampa. The minibuses leave around five in the morning.
What the price covers
paid Huascarán National Park entry; transport from Huaraz is extra
What to bring
- Walking shoes
- Sportswear
Rules on site
Do not attempt this hike before three or four days acclimatising in Huaraz: altitude sickness is common here and can be serious. Descend at once if you get a violent headache or start vomiting.
