Huascarán National Park protects the Cordillera Blanca, which is the world's highest tropical mountain range. Located in the central Peruvian Andes, the park's 340,000 hectares cover an elevational range from around 2,500 m to the several snow-capped peaks above 6,000 m. Among those peaks are Huascarán (Peru's highest at 6,768 m), Huandoy, Copa, Huantsán and many others.

Official efforts to protect this area started in 1960, when Senator Augusto Guzmán Robles presented a bill to the Peruvian Congress for the creation of Huascarán National Park. In 1963, the Forestry and Hunting Service (Servicio Forestal y de Caza) presented a preliminary project for the delimitation of the Cordillera Blanca National Park, covering an area of 321,000 hectares. On February 18, 1966 a government resolution prohibiting the logging and hunting of native species in the area of the Cordillera Blanca was issued. Later that year, the Patronage of Huascarán National Park was formed in Yungay. In 1967, Curry Slaymaker and Joel Albrecht, Peace Corps volunteers, formulated delimitation proposal on an area of 85,000 hectares; and simultaneously, the Forest Regional Service of Huaraz established the vicuña and queen-of the-Andes surveillance zone for an area of approximately 10,000 hectares. Finally, on July 1, 1975 Huascarán National Park was created by decree No. 0622-75-AG, with an extension of 340 000 hectares.

When someday comes you'll need to get in.

When someday comes you'll need to be able to get around.