Illimani

Illimani rises about 82 kilometers southeast of La Paz, Bolivia, in the Cordillera Real subrange of the Andes, reaching an elevation of about 6,438 meters, the highest peak in the Cordillera Real and the second-highest in Bolivia after Sajama. It is a non-volcanic fold mountain built mainly of granodiorite and metamorphic rock, raised through the same subduction-driven Andean orogeny that built the rest of the range, with glaciers on its northern and eastern slopes feeding rivers that supply the La Paz valley. In Aymara tradition the mountain is revered as an apu, a guardian spirit watching over La Paz, and its name is generally translated as place of light. Its slopes were the site of the 1985 crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 980, the highest-altitude controlled flight into terrain accident in commercial aviation history. This entity documents Illimani specifically as a geological formation, the highest peak of Bolivia's Cordillera Real and a revered guardian mountain of La Paz.