A Peruvian Andean summit whose striped mineral layers — burgundy, turquoise, gold, and lavender — were hidden under glacial ice for thousands of years until climate change stripped the cap away in the early 2000s.
For thousands of years, the mountain existed under a glacier. The Quechua people who lived in the region knew the mountain as Vinicunca. They did not know what it looked like. Then the glacier receded, and the mountain revealed itself. Exposed to the sky for perhaps the first time in human memory, the surface showed its mineral composition in horizontal stripes: burgundy red from iron, sulphur yellow, turquoise green from copper chlorite, pale lavender from manganese oxide, white from quartz. The discovery is recent — Vinicunca did not appear on tourist itineraries until around 2015. The journey requires driving four hours from Cusco, then a steep hike at 5,200 meters where the oxygen is 50% thinner than at sea level. The altitude is the challenge and also part of the point. You come over a ridge breathing hard, and there it is — the striped summit, the colors real and improbable in the high Andean light.