This mountain looks so beautiful!

We always have a preference for mountains.

Whether it is the heroic spirit of "I will climb to the top of the mountain and look down on all the other mountains";

It is still the beauty of "the water is rippling and beautiful when the weather is sunny, and the mountains are misty and strange when it rains."

We not only like to see high mountains and magnificent mountains, but also strange mountains and unique mountains.

In Peru, South America, there is a mountain that is unique.

In the past, the mountain was considered sacred by the locals, and thousands of people made the pilgrimage every year.

The reason is simple: this mountain looks beautiful.

According to a local legend, the mountain was once completely covered with snow. Later, as the snow slowly melted, people discovered a strange sight under the snow - a "rainbow".

Yes, this beautiful mountain range that looks like it was created in post-production has an apt nickname - Rainbow Mountain.

Where do rainbows come from?

Rainbow Mountain is located at an altitude of 5,200 meters in the Ausangate Mountains and is part of the Ausangate Mountains.

Mount Ausangate is part of the Huelcanuta Mountains in the Andes, with an altitude of 6,384 meters.

The Andes is an extremely complex mountain range that stretches along the western edge of the South American continent like a giant dragon.

"Its back is covered in spikes, and its head is a flame."

Aconcagua

As the longest mountain range in the world, the Andes is the result of the compression and collision of two major plates.

The South American Plate was subducted by the Nazca Plate below, causing local stress on the earth's crust and rapid deformation of the rocks, resulting in large-scale uplift to form the Andes Mountains.

It has also undergone many folding, uplift, faulting, magma intrusion and volcanic activities.

Our protagonist, Rainbow Mountain, owes its colorful appearance to volcanic activity.

The original Rainbow Mountain was actually a huge sedimentary rock. When the sediment was first deposited and began to undergo diagenetic changes, thanks to the active volcanic activity here, the hot magma and mountain rocks met, producing a variety of minerals.

These minerals undergo a gorgeous transformation through different environmental conditions and natural weathering.

The red and brown colour of the sediments indicates that the trace minerals in them are oxidised rust.

This is due to the oxidation reaction that occurs when iron-rich sediments are exposed to oxygen and water.

The bright yellow color is because the volcanic magma contains very high levels of sulfur, which reacts with iron to form iron sulfide.

The green that stubbornly stands out among the red and yellow is due to the history and concentration of rock formation. The chlorite in it will give the sediments varying shades of green.

In Rainbow Mountain, due to the uplift of the earth's crust, the sides of the sedimentary layers tilted, revealing the gaps between the clearly defined strata. As a result, the various colors of Rainbow Mountain are mixed to a certain extent: there is yellow in red, green in yellow, and red in green.

Eventually, this huge piece of sedimentary rock transformed into "rainbow stone".

Lao Tzu once said: "Tao begets one, one begets two, two begets three, and three begets all things." The same is true for the appearance of Rainbow Mountain.

Because of the collision of plates billions of years ago, coupled with the special attachment to high temperature and water, and the preference of the largest movement on earth - wind, the Rainbow Mountain, which seems to have been created by gods, appeared.