Chacaltaya
mountain in Bolivia
Chacaltaya (Mollo language for "bridge of winds" or "winds meeting point", Aymara for "cold road") is a mountain in the Cordillera Real, one of the mountain ranges of the Cordillera Oriental, itself a range of the Bolivian Andes. Its elevation is 5,395 meters (17,700 ft). Chacaltaya's glacier — which was as old as 18,000 years — had an area of 0.22 km2 (0.085 sq mi) in 1940, which had been reduced to 0.01 km2 (0.0039 sq mi) in 2007 and was completely gone by 2009. Half of the meltdown, as measured by volume, took place before 1980. The final meltdown after 1980, due to missing precipitation and the warm phase of El Niño, resulted in the glacier's disappearance in 2009. The glacier was located about 30 kilometers (19 mi) from La Paz, near Huayna Potosí mountain.
Ski area
The glacier on Chacaltaya served as Bolivia's only ski resort. It was the world's highest lift-served ski area and the northernmost in South America.
The rope tow, the first in South America, was built in 1939 using an automobile engine; it was housed in the site's original clapboard lodge, and is now inoperable. The road to the base of the 200-meter (660 ft) drop is reached by a narrow road, also built in the 1930s.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Chacaltaya” is mountain in Bolivia. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Chacaltaya, mountain and Bolivia, not as a finished interpretation.
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Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q774941. VIAF identifies the subject as 171405040. Authority coordinates are -16.353, -68.131. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1940, 2007, 2009 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chacaltaya” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.