The Sierra Nevada del Cocuy Chita or Guican National Natural Park (or Sierra Nevada de Chita or Sierra Nevada de Güicán, Spanish: Parque Natural Sierra Nevada del Cocuy Chita o Guican is a national park and a series of highlands and glaciated peaks located within the Cordillera Oriental mountain range in the Andes Mountains of Colombia, at its easternmost point. It also corresponds to the highest range of the Eastern Cordillera and holds the biggest glacial mass in South America, north of the Equator. Since 1977, this region is protected within a National Natural Park because of its fragile páramos, extraordinary bio-diversity and endemism, and its function as a corridor for migratory species under conditions of climate change. Among the Sierra’s natural attractions are the remaining 18 ice-covered peaks, glacial lakes and waterfalls.
Pan de Azúcar (5120 m) in the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy
A hiker reaches the glacier atop Ritak U'wa Blanco in Sierra Nevada de Cocuy National Park, part of the Cordillera Oriental of the Colombian Andes.
The side of Pan de Azúcar peak (left) and can be seen through a broad valley with sparse páramo vegetation. Glacially deposited boulders can be seen on the foreground and small moraines cab be observed as gray, rocky ridges in the middleground, trending in the same direction as that of the photograph. Colluvium (rock fall) deposits can be observed by the steep rocky faces to the left.
A view of glacial, U-shaped valley with several small recessional moraines and a moraine-dammed lake. The lake's shape is parallel to that of the moraines, indicating its glacial origin. The recessional moraines indicate several events of glacial retreat hiatuses. The rock face in the background shows the Cretaceous - age sedimentary rocks that make up the landscape in the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy area.
The U'wa are an indigenous people living in the cloud forests of northeastern Colombia. Historically, the U'wa numbered as many as 20,000, scattered over a homeland that extended across the Venezuela-Colombia border. Some 7-8,000 U'wa are alive today.
U'wa leader Berito Kubaru'wa
