Pico Simón Bolívar

Pico Simón Bolívar

Mountains between clouds, Pico Cristobal Colon, Pico Simon Bolivar, Highest peaks of Colombia at 5700 meters of elevation with snow on top, viewed from Cuchilla San Lorenzo | Peter Gudella

Pico Simón Bolívar rises above northern Colombia in the extraordinary Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, an isolated mountain massif that climbs abruptly from the Caribbean region to permanent ice and some of the highest elevations in the country. Long overshadowed in geographic references by neighboring Pico Cristóbal Colón, modern surveying now provides strong evidence that Pico Simón Bolívar is actually Colombia’s highest summit.

A precise differential-GPS survey conducted in December 2024 measured Pico Simón Bolívar at 5,720.42 meters (18,767 feet) above sea level. The same survey measured nearby Pico Cristóbal Colón at 5,712.79 meters, making Simón Bolívar approximately 7.6 meters higher. These measurements differ substantially from the traditional elevations of approximately 5,775 meters that continue to appear in many maps and official references.

🏔️ Overview

Pico Simón Bolívar is one of the two dominant summits of Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. It stands only a short distance from Pico Cristóbal Colón, forming an exceptionally high glaciated summit complex above the Caribbean lowlands.

Unlike Colombia’s three principal Andean cordilleras—the Cordillera Occidental, Cordillera Central, and Cordillera Oriental—the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta forms a geographically isolated massif in northern Colombia. Its extreme vertical relief, proximity to the Caribbean Sea, biodiversity, glaciers, and Indigenous cultural significance make it one of South America’s most remarkable mountain regions.

Pico Simón Bolívar is named for Simón Bolívar, the military and political leader who played a central role in the independence of Colombia and several other South American countries.

⚡ Fast Facts

Fact	Details
Continent	South America
Country	Colombia
Department	Magdalena
Mountain Range	Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta
Parent Peak	Pico Cristóbal Colón — listed by Peakbagger as the line parent
Elevation	5,720.42 m / 18,767 ft according to the December 2024 dGPS survey
Traditional Elevation	Approximately 5,775 m / 18,947 ft in many older and official references
Prominence	Approximately 5,529 m / 18,140 ft
Isolation	Approximately 1,286.5 km / 799.4 mi
Nearest Higher Neighbor (NHN)	Volcán Cayambe, Ecuador
Coordinates	Approximately 10.8347° N, 73.6905° W
Protected Area	Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta National Natural Park
First Recorded Ascent	February 2, 1939
First Ascent Team	Erwin Kraus, Gustav Pichler, and Enrico Praolini

Peakbagger currently lists Pico Simón Bolívar at 5,720 meters with 5,529 meters of prominence and approximately 1,286.5 kilometers of isolation. Its tremendous prominence places it among the most topographically prominent mountains on Earth.

📍 Location

Pico Simón Bolívar lies in Magdalena Department in northern Colombia, within the high central portion of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.

The massif rises dramatically behind Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Although it lies near the northern end of the Andes, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is physiographically separated from Colombia’s three main Andean branches.

The broader mountain system extends across parts of Magdalena, Cesar, and La Guajira departments and contains forests, páramo, alpine terrain, glaciers, river headwaters, and numerous sacred places associated with Indigenous communities.

Much of the high Sierra lies within or adjacent to Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta National Natural Park, an area recognized for both its extraordinary ecological diversity and profound cultural importance.

📏 Elevation & Prominence

The elevation of Pico Simón Bolívar has long been unusually complicated.

For decades, geographic references commonly assigned elevations of approximately 5,775 meters (18,947 feet) to both Pico Simón Bolívar and Pico Cristóbal Colón. Colombia’s National Natural Parks authority continues to describe the two peaks as reaching 5,775 meters.

Modern measurements tell a different story.

During a December 2024 expedition, Eric Gilbertson performed a prolonged differential-GPS measurement from the summit of Pico Simón Bolívar and made additional measurements comparing Bolívar directly with Cristóbal Colón. The resulting elevation was:

Pico Simón Bolívar: 5,720.42 m

Pico Cristóbal Colón: 5,712.79 m

All five independent comparisons made during the expedition indicated that Pico Simón Bolívar was higher.

This result makes Pico Simón Bolívar the strongest current candidate for the title of highest mountain in Colombia.

Its approximately 5,529 meters of topographic prominence is even more extraordinary. Because the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta rises so independently from surrounding lowlands, Pico Simón Bolívar ranks among the handful of most prominent summits on Earth. Its nearest higher mountain is Volcán Cayambe in Ecuador, roughly 1,286 kilometers away.

🧊 A Summit Changed by Melting Ice

The dramatic difference between historic and modern elevations appears to reflect changes in the summit ice.

The 1939 survey measured Pico Simón Bolívar at approximately 5,773 meters. The December 2024 survey produced an elevation of 5,720.42 meters, a difference of roughly 53 meters.

Researchers examining the measurements concluded that substantial loss of summit ice has altered the elevations of both Bolívar and Cristóbal Colón. Pico Cristóbal Colón showed an even larger apparent reduction from its historic surveyed elevation.

This change is part of a much larger pattern of glacial retreat throughout the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.

Colombia’s Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies, IDEAM, estimated that glacier coverage in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta had fallen to approximately 4.84 square kilometers in 2024, down from about 5.30 square kilometers in 2022. IDEAM reports that the range lost approximately 8.7% of its glacier area during that period alone.

Historical estimates indicate an even more dramatic long-term retreat: glacier coverage across the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta was estimated at approximately 81.6 square kilometers during the second half of the nineteenth century.

🪨 Geology

Pico Simón Bolívar is part of the geologically complex Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta massif.

The mountain system has experienced a long history of tectonic activity, metamorphism, magmatism, uplift, faulting, and erosion. Research summarized by the Servicio Geológico Colombiano indicates that the massif’s modern position and extreme relief developed through multiple stages of tectonic evolution involving interactions between continental crust and the Caribbean Plate.

Geological evidence suggests that the Santa Marta massif was once more closely connected with what is now Colombia’s Central Cordillera. Later tectonic movement, particularly during the Cenozoic Era, helped separate and uplift the massif.

Today, that history is expressed in an exceptionally steep landscape rising from tropical lowlands to elevations exceeding 5,700 meters.

Scarlet macaw (Ara macao) is a large yellow, red and blue Neotropical parrot native to humid evergreen forests of the Americas. Malagana, Bolivar department. Wildlife and birdwatching in Colombia | Artush

🌿 Flora & Fauna

The immediate summit of Pico Simón Bolívar is an extreme environment dominated by rock, snow, ice, intense solar radiation, low temperatures, and limited vegetation.

Farther down the mountain, however, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta contains an exceptional sequence of ecosystems.

Depending on elevation and slope exposure, the massif includes tropical forests, montane forests, cloud forests, high Andean vegetation, páramo, superpáramo, and glacial environments. The enormous change in elevation over a relatively short horizontal distance creates numerous ecological zones.

The Sierra Nevada is also recognized for unusually high biodiversity and endemism. Its geographic isolation has allowed populations of plants and animals to evolve separately from those elsewhere in Colombia.

The ecological importance of the region contributed to its recognition as part of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta Biosphere Reserve in 1979.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Indigenous and Cultural Significance

Understanding Pico Simón Bolívar requires more than looking at its elevation.

The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is the ancestral territory of the Arhuaco, Kogui, Wiwa, and Kankuamo peoples, whose cultures maintain deep spiritual relationships with the mountains, rivers, forests, sacred sites, and surrounding landscape.

Colombia’s National Natural Parks authority describes the Sierra Nevada as a landscape of exceptional cultural significance and notes the continuing presence of these Indigenous peoples within the region.

For this reason, the high mountains should not be regarded simply as recreational climbing objectives. Access to sacred areas can be restricted, and permission from Indigenous communities may be essential.

🥾 Hiking & Climbing Routes

Pico Simón Bolívar is not a conventional hiking mountain.

Reaching the summit requires a long expedition through remote terrain followed by technical travel over glaciers, steep snow, ice, and rock. Access itself has historically been one of the greatest obstacles.

The first recorded ascent occurred on February 2, 1939, when Erwin Kraus, Gustav Pichler, and Enrico Praolini reached the summit. Later that year, a separate team climbed neighboring Pico Cristóbal Colón.

For decades during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, successful climbing expeditions became extremely uncommon.

A major reason today is the cultural significance of the mountains. The American Alpine Journal reported that local communities had largely prohibited climbing of these high peaks beginning in the late 1990s. Beginning in 2021, the Arhuaco community permitted selected expeditions to enter the area.

During the December 2024 expedition, climbers approached the high peaks after approximately six days of trekking through several passes above 4,000 meters.

The team reached the Bolívar-Colón col using glacier, ice, and steep snow terrain before climbing rock and mixed terrain toward the summit. Their variation included low-fifth-class rock and sections rated approximately 5.6 M2.

This is serious expedition mountaineering rather than a recreational summit hike.

🏔️ Field Guide Tip: Do not plan Pico Simón Bolívar as an independently accessible trekking objective. Access to the high Sierra depends on current restrictions and permission from local Indigenous authorities and other relevant organizations. Even where permission is granted, reaching the summit requires expedition logistics, acclimatization, glacier skills, technical climbing experience, and appropriate local support.

🌤️ Best Time to Visit

There is no conventional public climbing season for Pico Simón Bolívar because access authorization is more important than the calendar.

Climatically, the Caribbean region around the Sierra Nevada generally experiences a relatively drier period from approximately December through March, although precipitation varies dramatically with elevation, slope orientation, and local weather patterns.

The successful elevation-survey expedition of 2024 took place during December.

Even in relatively dry periods, summit conditions can include freezing temperatures, strong winds, clouds, snow, hard ice, crevasses, and sudden weather changes.

Visitors interested primarily in experiencing the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta rather than climbing Pico Simón Bolívar have considerably more realistic options in lower-elevation areas where authorized trekking and cultural tourism are established.

🧭 Nearby Mountains & Attractions

Pico Cristóbal Colón

Pico Cristóbal Colón stands only a short distance from Pico Simón Bolívar.

The two mountains were historically considered essentially equal in elevation, and Cristóbal Colón was traditionally recognized as Colombia’s highest summit. The 2024 survey instead measured it at 5,712.79 meters, approximately 7.6 meters below Simón Bolívar.

Pico Simmonds

Pico Simmonds is another major high summit within the central Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and forms part of the spectacular group of glaciated peaks surrounding Bolívar and Colón.

La Reina

La Reina is another significant high summit within the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta massif.

Pico Tulio Ospino

Pico Tulio Ospino is another of the range’s high peaks and helps illustrate just how extensive the Sierra Nevada’s high-mountain terrain is.

Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

The broader Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is itself the principal attraction. Its landscapes extend from Caribbean environments through forests and páramo to glaciers and some of the highest summits in northern South America.

💡 Fun Facts

Pico Simón Bolívar is named after Simón Bolívar, one of the most important figures in the independence movements of northern South America.
It should not be confused with Pico Bolívar in Venezuela, another major mountain named for the same historical figure.
The December 2024 survey indicates that Pico Simón Bolívar is approximately 7.6 meters higher than Pico Cristóbal Colón.
With roughly 5,529 meters of prominence, Pico Simón Bolívar ranks among the most topographically prominent mountains on the planet.
Its nearest higher neighbor is Volcán Cayambe in Ecuador, more than 1,280 kilometers away.
The high peaks of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta rise extraordinarily close to Colombia’s Caribbean coast.
The mountain’s summit elevation can change as its remaining ice cap melts.
Pico Simón Bolívar’s first recorded ascent occurred in 1939, decades before modern satellite mapping and GPS surveying.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Is Pico Simón Bolívar the highest mountain in Colombia?

According to the most precise recent field survey, yes.

Differential-GPS measurements made in December 2024 recorded Pico Simón Bolívar at 5,720.42 meters and Pico Cristóbal Colón at 5,712.79 meters. This makes Simón Bolívar approximately 7.6 meters higher.

Some Colombian government and older reference sources still list both peaks at approximately 5,775 meters, so conflicting figures remain common.

How high is Pico Simón Bolívar?

The best current measured elevation is 5,720.42 meters (18,767 feet).

Older sources frequently give elevations around 5,775 meters.

Where is Pico Simón Bolívar?

Pico Simón Bolívar is in Magdalena Department, northern Colombia, within the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.

Is Pico Simón Bolívar part of the Andes?

The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is geographically isolated from Colombia’s three principal Andean cordilleras. Its geological history is related to regional tectonic processes that also shaped northern South America, but the massif forms a distinct mountain block rather than one of the country’s three main Andean branches.

Can you hike Pico Simón Bolívar?

It is not a normal hiking destination. Reaching the summit involves a lengthy remote approach and technical glacier, snow, ice, mixed, and rock climbing.

Access to the high peaks is also restricted and requires appropriate authorization.

Who first climbed Pico Simón Bolívar?

The first recorded ascent was made on February 2, 1939, by Erwin Kraus, Gustav Pichler, and Enrico Praolini.

Why do some sources say Pico Cristóbal Colón is higher?

Historic surveys and maps commonly identified Cristóbal Colón as Colombia’s highest summit or treated the two peaks as essentially equal.

Changes in summit ice and improved surveying have altered that picture. The December 2024 differential-GPS survey found Pico Simón Bolívar to be higher.

Are there still glaciers on Pico Simón Bolívar?

Yes, ice remains in the high Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, but the range’s glaciers are rapidly retreating.

IDEAM estimated approximately 4.84 square kilometers of glacier ice remained across the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in 2024, compared with more than 80 square kilometers estimated for the second half of the nineteenth century.

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