Los Nevados National Natural Park

Los Nevados National Natural Park (Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados) is a national park located in the Cordillera Central of the Colombian Andes. The park features Colombia's highest and northernmost active volcanoes including the glacier-capped Nevado del Ruiz, Nevado del Tolima, and Nevado de Santa Isabel, and the glacier-free superpáramo peaks (paramillos) of Cisne, Santa Rosa and Quindío. Other elevated structures of volcanic origin within the park are Alto La Piraña, La Olleta, Cerro España, and the Peñas de Caracoli. Cerro Bravo and Cerro Machín are located outside the park but part of the same volcanic region.

The park is located in the departments of Caldas, Quindío, Risaralda, Tolima and spans between the municipalities Manizales, Villamaría, Santa Rosa de Cabal, Pereira, Salento, Villahermosa, Anzoátegui, Santa Isabel, Murillo, Ibagué and Casabianca.

State of the Park
The park was temporarily closed by the authorities since March 31, 2023 because the Nevado del Ruiz Volcano has increased its activity and there are fears of a possible eruption.

Entrance through Brisas sector (northern sector of the Park) is only allowed to Valle de las Tumbas since the Servicio Geológico Colombiano has declared Nevado del Ruiz Volcano's activity at Orange Alert Level (level II). It is highly recommend for visitors to consult the state of volcanic activity in the Servicio Geológico Colombiano's web page before their visit.

On August 10 2023, the National Natural Parks of Colombia issued a resolution to open the park, authorizing the entrance of visitors, so its possible to visit it again. Take into account the new access hours to the park, which are from Monday to Sunday from 7:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

Geology
Glacial activity has shaped the park's landscape 3000 m above mean sea level, leaving U-shaped valleys and moraines behind. Extrusive igneous rock is dominant above 3500 m on the eastern slopes and 2200 m on the western slopes. The Otún Lake, which lies in an extinct volcano crater, and the Green Lake are located in the area.

Hydrography
The protected area is important for the region because of the countless sources of water that originate within. Glaciers occupy 4% of the area belonging to the three volcanoes, Nevado del Ruiz, Nevado de Santa Isabel and Nevado del Tolima. The melting waters from the glaciers give birth to the rivers that originate in the park and that conform 10 basins and 19 streams of different sizes and characteristics; six of the basins flow into the Magdalena River watershed (Gualí, Lagunilla, Recio, Totare and Coello) and the remaining four (Chinchiná, Campoalegre, Otún and Quindío) into the Cauca River watershed.

The park's hydrographic networks supply water to over for 2,000,000 inhabitants in the region, to coffee-growers and to most of the rice and cotton crops in the Tolima Department.

The Otún wetland system, located within the Park, was declared an internationally important Ramsar Convention wetland.

Glacial retreat
At the start of the 20th century, six peaks had glaciers: El Ruiz, Santa Isabel, Tolima, El Cisne, Quindío and Santa Rosa. The glaciers reached as low as 4500 meters above sea level.

The phenomenon of glacial retreat has been severe since the mid-twentieth century. Of the former six peaks with glaciers, there are currently only three: Nevado del Ruiz, Nevado de Santa Isabel and Nevado de Tolima. The glaciers of the three lower peaks (Quindío, El Cisne, and Santa Rosa) melted completely by the 1960s. The ice line is now above 4800 meters in elevation.

In 2002, IDEAM warned about the melting of the ice caps of the snow-capped mountains of the national park. Further proof of this was the disappearance of the Ice Cathedrals, which were huge caverns in the lower part of the Nevado del Ruiz glaciers. They existed before 1995 and were frequented by climbers.

The surviving glaciers face a constant process of melting, the situation being critical for the Tolima and Santa Isabel volcanoes, whose glacial areas are less than one square kilometer each. These two glaciers are expected to disappear between 2030 and 2040.

Flora and fauna
The park is composed of diverse ecosystems that change depending on the altitude. The lower regions of the park are composed of Andean forests, high Andean forests and high Andean wetlands. The higher regions of the park consist of the páramo and super-páramo ecosystems. The páramo is composed of grassland, peat bog, scrubland, swamps and lagoons and occupies 80% of the park's area. The super-páramo is a lunar-like landscape, composed of rocks, ashes, and sparse vegetation.

Flora
The area is home to 1250 species of vascular plants, 200 bryophytes, 300 lichens and 180 macroscopic fungi. On the lower slopes and in the valleys the Andean wax palms are dominant. The upper Andean forest has trees reaching up to 30 m in height. In the páramo, frailejones dominate the landscape and a range of mosses, lichens can be observed. Coulored algae can be found in the various lagoons.

Fauna
Noteworthy birds include blue-crowned motmot, yellow-eared parrot, Fuertes's parrot, rufous-fronted parakeet, Andean condor, brown-banded antpitta and ruddy duck. The buffy helmetcrest hummingbird is endemic to the region. Noteworthy mammals include the mountain tapir, spectacled bear, northern pudú, oncilla, cougar and white-eared opossum.

Notable peaks
The following peaks in the park have an elevation of at least 4500 meters and a topographic prominence of at least 100 meters. Some peaks have multiple subpeaks, in which case only the highest one is included.

Note that elevation and prominence data vary slightly in accuracy/precision due to surveying history and techniques, changing environmental conditions (e.g. melting snow and ice), and digital model selection, which lead to some disagreement between sources (e.g. mapcarta.com, peakery.com, opentopomap.org, peakvisor.com, peakbagger.com, summitpost.org, peakjut.com, and Google Earth).