Wascaran, at 22,2005 feet tall or 9,100 meters, it's only the fourth tallest mountain in South America.

And on the world stage, it's even less impressive.

And yet, despite this, it holds the record for being the single deadliest mountain on Earth.

It's responsible for more deaths than K2, Everest, and the next dozen deadliest combined.

In this video, we'll go over the instance that led to this horrific record, and as always,

viewer discretion is advised.

Among all of the different wonders of nature, mountains probably do the best job of illustrating

how truly massive they can be from a human scale perspective.

Even though oceans, deserts, the moon, and many other things can easily be larger, it's hard

or even impossible to really appreciate their scale with your eyes.

But a mountain, cutting its way up into the sky, towering over you, and forcing you to lean

back just to fit it into your field of view, has a certain kind of presence.

Wascaran is the tallest mountain in Peru, which is a country already well known for beautiful

mountain ranges.

And back in the 1960s, as it does today,

Wascaran ruled over an area incredibly popular with climbers for its natural beauty, as well

as local and indigenous farmers.

The Cordillera Blanca mountain range, which the mountain is a part of, is high enough

to capture snow and rain for a large portion of the year, and this then trickles down into

the surrounding communities.

And the end result is an area visibly greener from space than almost anywhere else in Peru to the west of the

Amazon rainforest. Naturally, this attracted a lot of people, and in the dozens of villages and

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