Qualla: Ojos del Salado

Ojos del Salado: Introduction

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit sergejf, CC BY-SA 2.0. There is a lake near the top of Ojos del Salado. That fact alone is worth pausing over. At 6,480 meters above sea level, tucked inside the summit crater of Earth's highest volcano, a permanent body of water roughly 100 meters across somehow persists in one of the driest environments on the planet. The Atacama Desert, which surrounds the volcano's base, receives almost no precipitation. The mountain itself sits along the Arid Diagonal of South America, where conditions are so desiccated that substantial glaciers cannot form and snow rarely accumulates. Yet the lake endures -- the highest lake of any kind in the world, a small defiance of the logic that governs everything else on this mountain.

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Image: sergejf | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ojos del Salado: A Volcano That Hides

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Emilio Erazo-Fischer (Flickr profile), CC BY-SA 2.0. Ojos del Salado rises to 6,893 meters on the border between Chile and Argentina, making it not only the highest volcano on Earth but also the highest peak in Chile. Despite these superlatives, the mountain spent centuries in relative obscurity. Nested among a cluster of peaks of ...

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Image: Emilio Erazo-Fischer (Flickr profile) | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ojos del Salado: The Elevation Wars

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit sergejf, CC BY-SA 2.0. Confusion about the mountain's exact height triggered one of the more entertaining disputes in mountaineering history. In 1956, a Chilean expedition measured Ojos del Salado at 7,084 meters using a barometer -- a number the press eagerly reported as fact, despite the well-known u...

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Image: sergejf | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ojos del Salado: Life at the Edge of Nothing

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit sergejf, CC BY-SA 2.0. The aridity that defines Ojos del Salado creates a landscape stripped to its essentials. No vegetation grows above 4,900 meters. Below that line, the terrain supports a sparse desert scrub that gives way to richer communities farther downslope, where guanacos and vicunas graze an...

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Image: sergejf | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ojos del Salado: The Climb and the Quiet

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Calvmoes, CC BY-SA 4.0. Only several hundred climbers attempt Ojos del Salado each year, a fraction of the traffic on Aconcagua. The mountain does not require technical ice or rock climbing, but the combination of extreme altitude, bitter cold, relentless wind, and waterless terrain defeats roughly two-...

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Image: Calvmoes | CC BY-SA 4.0