Qualla: El Cocuy National Park

El Cocuy National Park: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martin Roca, CC BY-SA 3.0. The U'wa people, who have lived in the lowlands surrounding the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy for centuries, hold a simple belief about the ice above them: you should not touch snow or walk on it. The glaciers are sacred, not meant for human feet. By 2030, according to Colombia's Hydrological, Meteorological, and Environmental Studies Institute, the question may be moot. El Cocuy's ice fields, the largest glacial mass in South America north of the equator, are vanishing so rapidly that within a few years there may be nothing left to touch. What remains right now, in this narrow window of geological time, is one of the most extraordinary mountain landscapes on the continent.

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Image: Martin Roca | CC BY-SA 3.0

El Cocuy National Park: Ice at the Equator

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martin Roca, CC BY-SA 3.0. El Cocuy National Park sits in the Eastern Cordillera of the Colombian Andes, just six degrees north of the equator, where glaciers have no business existing and yet have persisted for millennia. Established in 1977, the park covers 306,000 hectares and contains eighteen snow-cov...

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Image: Martin Roca | CC BY-SA 3.0

El Cocuy National Park: A Landscape Shaped by Ice

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martin Roca, CC BY-SA 3.0. The post-glacial geology of El Cocuy reads like a textbook on what ice can do to stone. Cirques carved by ancient glaciers scoop into the mountainsides like giant amphitheaters. Moraines, the rubble piles left by retreating ice, dam glacial lakes with names like La Pintada and La...

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Image: Martin Roca | CC BY-SA 3.0

El Cocuy National Park: Sacred Ground, Contested Ground

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Grundkarte Milenioscuro, Relief Alexrk2, CC BY-SA 3.0. The relationship between the park and the U'wa people, also known as the Tunebos, is one of Colombia's more complex conservation stories. The U'wa reservation overlaps the national park, and parts of the park are dedicated to their traditional farming, grazing, hunting, and fishi...

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Image: Grundkarte Milenioscuro, Relief Alexrk2 | CC BY-SA 3.0

El Cocuy National Park: The Clock on the Ice

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martin Roca, CC BY-SA 3.0. Colombia once had six glaciated mountain ranges. Today it has four, and the ice on each is retreating. At El Cocuy, what was once a continuous icefield has fragmented into scattered snowcaps, each one smaller than the last satellite measurement showed. The Colombian government's ...

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Image: Martin Roca | CC BY-SA 3.0