Overview
The Quelccaya ice cap, is the second largest glaciated area in the tropics, located inc the Vilcanota range east of Cusco city – Perú, the cap covers an área of 16.5 square miles, with ice up to 660 feet thick and amazingly surrounded by cliffs, and tall snow caped mountains, higher than 19,000 feet asl, this place is an important source of water eventually melting down to the Vilcanota or sacred river of the Inkas, regularly this place is monitored in order to keep searching the glaciers, the little ice age that we had thousand years ago and the weather phenomenon like “El niño” that we had way ago. The Quelccaya Glacier, also called Quelccaya Ice Cap or Quelccaya Ice Field, is a glacier located in southeastern Peru, in the Vilcanota mountain range, an extension of
the Eastern Cordillera of the Andes. With a length of more than 17 km, a surface area of 44 km² and an ice cap more than 200 m thick, it is the largest glacier in the entire tropical zone of the world.