El Morado Natural Monument

This guide to El Morado Natural Monument outside Santiago starts at the rope and warning sign where the trail now stops short of the San Francisco Glacier, and the decades when hikers could still walk up and touch the ice. You'll hear how CONAF, the forest service managing the reserve, redrew the trail after the slope above the glacier was found unstable, and how the reserve came to be protected in 1974 around the peak, glacier and lagoon. Condors still ride the thermals above the cirque as you walk in.