Geography of Argentina - Mountains and Hills

Mountains and Hills

The Argentinean Andes contain some of the tallest mountains in South America, including Cerro Bonete 6,872, Ojos del Salado 6,893 m, Cerro Mercedario 6,768 m, and Cerro Aconcagua, which at 6,960 m is the tallest peak on the continent and in the entire Western Hemisphere. Both of these peaks are located near the Chile border southwest of San Juan. The Andes region is also home to arid basins, lush foothills covered with grape vineyards, glacial mountains, and half of the Los Lagos Region (Lake District) (the other half is in Chile). The Lake District, named for the many glacial lakes carved out of the mountains and subsequently filled by melt-water and rain, is located in the southern Andes and boasts a diverse natural landscape of glaciers, native old growth forests, lakes, rivers, fjords, volcanoes, and sentinel mountains. Throughout the Andes that separate Chile and Argentina there are more than 1,800 volcanoes, 28 of which are considered to be active. These account for approximately one-fifth of the Earth's active volcanoes.

Patagonia, the southern region of Argentina, is a combination of pastoral steppes and glacial regions. Located in this region near the Chilean border is Parc Nacional Los Glaciares (Glacier National Park ), where some 300 glaciers make up part of the Patagonian Ice Cap (21,760 km2). The ice cap, flowing into the Pacific oceans from the Andes, is the largest in the Southern Hemisphere outside of Antarctica. Thirteen of the glaciers feed lakes in the region. The Upsala glacier, at 60 km long and 10 km wide, is the largest in South America and can only be reached by boat, since it floats in Lago Argentino. The next largest is the 4.8 km wide Perito Moreno, which stretches about 35 km to Lago Argentino, where it forms a natural dam in the lake. Jagged mountain peaks formed from granite include Cerro Fitz Roy 3,405 m, Cerro Torre 3,102 m, and Cerro Pináculo 2,160 m.

Smaller mountain ranges also exist in central South America. These ranges cut across the center of the country and serve as the divider between the southern Patagonia region and the northeastern Pampas. From west to east these ranges are the Sierra Lihuel-Calel, the Sierra de la Ventana, and the Sierra del Tandil.