The Pastoruri glacier is a cirque glacier, located in the southern part of the Cordillera Blanca, part of the Andes mountain range, in Northern Peru in the Ancash region.

[2] The glacier occupies an Andean peak around 5,250 metres (17,200 feet) above sea level, and so has steep, cliff like edges, with heavily crevassed areas characteristic of a cirque glacier.

[1] Engineer Benjamin Morales Arnao, local glaciologist, has tested a method to reverse the thaw; cover the ice with a layer of sawdust 15 cm thick.

[3] "Those experiments curb glacial retreat on a small scale, but cannot bring ice blocks like Pastoruri back from the brink," said Selwyn Valverde with the Huascaran National Park, home to Pastoruri and more than 700 other shrinking Peruvian glaciers.

"It's irreversible at this point," he said, adding that Pastoruri is no longer technically a glacier because it does not build up ice in the winter to release in the summer.