🇵🇪 Peru · The Highlands and the Andes
Laguna Parón is the largest lake in the Cordillera Blanca and one of the most spectacular in Peru: a huge sheet of turquoise water set at around 4,200 meters, ringed by granite walls and by snow peaks that mirror themselves on its surface. Crowning it is Artesonraju, a perfect pyramid of ice that, by popular belief, inspired the Paramount Pictures logo. It's inside Parque Nacional Huascarán, in the province of Huaylas, near the town of Caraz.
One key point before you plan the trip: since 17 July 2023 Laguna Parón has been closed to tourism by decision of the management of Parque Nacional Huascarán, on the back of technical reports from INAIGEM (the Instituto Nacional de Investigación en Glaciares y Ecosistemas de Montaña) warning of a very high risk of an outburst flood -should an avalanche fall into it- and of blocks of rock breaking loose. As of July 2026 the lake is still closed: there are technical working groups and talks with the Cruz de Mayo farming community, which manages access, aimed at a gradual reopening, but there is still no confirmed date. INDECOPI even went as far as warning agencies not to offer the visit while the restriction lasts. Before booking any tour, check the current state of access.
When it is open, Parón's big advantage over Laguna 69 is that it doesn't demand a hard walk: you drive almost to the shore along a dirt road full of switchbacks, and from there a short 40-minute climb takes you to the viewpoint with the most impressive panorama in the range (Artesonraju, Pirámide de Garcilaso, Pisco and Chacraraju all around). Most people visited it on a full-day tour from Huaraz, although Caraz is much closer. Even without a long walk, it's still altitude: come acclimatized, bring warm clothes, strong sun protection and water, and respect the national park's rules.
Laguna Parón is a lake of glacial origin, the largest in the Cordillera Blanca, inside Parque Nacional Huascarán (created in 1975, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985). Its waters are regulated to prevent outburst floods and to supply the region with water and power; for years its management pitted the Cruz de Mayo community against the multinational Duke Energy, to the point that in 2008 the villagers took over the lake. Access has been closed to tourism since July 2023 because of the risk of a flood. Nevado Artesonraju, which towers over it, is famous for its likeness to the Paramount logo. More context on the history page.
Read the full history ↓The region of the snow-capped summits: between the Cordillera Blanca —the highest in the tropics— and the Callejón de Huaylas, home to Huascarán, to the temple of Chavín, to the avalanche that buried Yungay and to turquoise lakes.
Read the history of Áncash →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Laguna Parón is the largest of all the lakes in the Cordillera Blanca, in the region of Áncash. It sits at around 4,200 meters, in the province of Huaylas, near the town of Caraz, inside Parque Nacional Huascarán. It's a lake of glacial origin: it was formed by meltwater from the snow peaks around it and is still fed by them. Its deep turquoise water owes that color to the ultra-fine mineral particles the ice carries down as it melts.
Parón's natural setting is exceptional. The lake is closed in by an amphitheater of granite walls and snow-capped peaks, chief among them Artesonraju, Pirámide de Garcilaso, Pisco and Chacraraju. Artesonraju, a pyramid of ice with almost perfect lines, is the most famous: popular belief holds that it inspired the mountain in the Paramount Pictures logo. The company never confirmed it officially, but the resemblance fed the fame of the place.
Like the rest of the park, the Parón area is part of a protected high-mountain ecosystem. Parque Nacional Huascarán was created in 1975 and inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985, precisely for the natural richness of the Cordillera Blanca, the highest tropical range on the planet.
Behind the turquoise postcard lies one of the most emblematic water disputes in the Peruvian Andes. Because of its size, the water in Parón is regulated by a drainage tunnel that controls the level of the lake: it serves to prevent outburst floods -a real risk in a range full of glacial lakes- and at the same time to generate power downstream, at the Cañón del Pato hydroelectric plant on the Santa river.
In 1994, at the height of the privatization wave, the US multinational Duke Energy acquired the Cañón del Pato plant -and with it operating control of the lake and of some 540 hectares around it- which until then had been in the hands of the state-owned ElectroPerú. Over the following years, the Cruz de Mayo farming community and the farmers of Caraz complained that excessive water releases from Parón, made to maximize power generation, were damaging the irrigation infrastructure and putting the valley's population at risk.
The conflict blew up on 29 July 2008, when the people of Caraz and the Cruz de Mayo community physically took over the lake and its access roads, and ever since they have kept watch on the gates and the meters so that the outflow does not exceed roughly one cubic meter per second. A Mesa de Diálogo (dialogue roundtable) ran between 2008 and 2014, and in February 2014 an agreement was signed between the communities and Duke Energy allowing water to be used for generation under the supervision of an independent third party. Even so, much of the infrastructure remained de facto under community control, something that -as the Autoridad Nacional del Agua warned in 2026- has made proper maintenance harder.
As a visitor, it's worth keeping this background in mind: Parón isn't just a spectacular landscape but a source of life for the whole region and the stage for a tug-of-war, still unresolved, between water management, power generation and the rights of the high-Andean communities.
On 31 May 1970, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake off the coast of Áncash broke an enormous mass of ice and rock loose from the north face of Huascarán, which buried the town of Yungay, in the same Callejón de Huaylas where Caraz sits, the gateway to Laguna Parón. It was one of the deadliest natural disasters in Latin American history and changed forever the way the region lives with its glaciers and lakes.
Parón, being the largest lake and one of the highest in the range, has been under particular watch ever since for the risk of a GLOF ('glacial lake outburst flood', the sudden emptying of a glacial lake): an abrupt release that could set off a catastrophic flood downstream, over Caraz and other settlements in the valley. It isn't a theoretical fear: the Cordillera Blanca suffered several floods of this kind through the twentieth century, some with loss of life.
To cut that risk -and at the same time make use of the water- regulation works were built that make it possible to control the level of the lake, lower it when necessary and use the water for consumption and power generation down the valley. That double function, disaster prevention and economic use, is what explains why the management of Parón has been, and still is, a sensitive matter for the communities of Caraz and the Callejón de Huaylas.
The snow peaks around Laguna Parón, Artesonraju above all, are part of the history of world mountaineering. From the early twentieth century, European expeditions -Austrian and German for the most part- came to the Cordillera Blanca drawn by technical peaks of great beauty such as Alpamayo, Artesonraju and Chacraraju, and opened many of the first documented climbing routes in the region. Caraz, quieter than Huaraz, established itself as a secondary base for those expeditions.
As the decades passed, and above all after the rebuilding that followed the 1970 earthquake, mountain tourism in the Callejón de Huaylas branched out: alongside hard technical climbing came multi-day trekking and, more recently, single-day trips to lakes you can drive to, such as Parón. What sets Parón apart -high-mountain scenery without the need for a long walk- made it a very popular alternative to demanding outings like Laguna 69 or the Santa Cruz trek.
That boom, however, stopped dead on 17 July 2023, when the management of Parque Nacional Huascarán closed access to the lake on the back of INAIGEM reports warning of a very high risk of an outburst flood -should an avalanche fall into it- and of blocks of rock coming loose. As of July 2026 the lake was still closed to tourism, with technical working groups working toward a gradual reopening alongside the Cruz de Mayo community, and no confirmed date. The recent history of Parón thus sums up the three great forces shaping the Cordillera Blanca today: the beauty that draws the world, the glacier risk that demands caution and the community's push for control of the water. When it reopens, anyone who makes it to this remote but reachable corner will still be chasing the same image that made it famous: the pyramid of Artesonraju, twin of the Paramount Pictures mountain, reflected in the turquoise water.