Estanys de Tristaina are three lakes on a rock staircase, each one sitting in a hollow that a glacier gouged out of the granite as it ground its way down this cirque in northern Andorra. The lowest and smallest, Estany Primer, lies near 2,250 metres and holds the deepest blue; Estany del Mig follows at about 2,300; and the largest, Estany de Més Amunt, rests at roughly 2,330 metres under the scree wall that climbs to Pic de Tristaina, the 2,878-metre summit on the ridge Andorra shares with France. Meltwater spills from the top basin into the next and on down the valley, linking the three like steps in a stair. The whole cirque lies in Ordino, the parish UNESCO added to its network of biosphere reserves in 2020 — the first in the country.
A 4.5-kilometre loop from the La Coma car park at the Ordino-Arcalís ski area climbs barely 250 metres, and it hands the lakes over one at a time; only from the crest of the circuit do all three appear together, three sheets of blue in a bowl of grey rock. In late June and July the slopes below them flower with alpenrose, the low pink rhododendron of the Pyrenees, while old snow still lies in the shaded gullies. By late September the grass and bilberry heath turn copper, and in winter the lakes freeze and the cirque fills with snow, crossed on snowshoes. On the summit above, at 2,701 metres, a 25-metre steel ring hangs over the drop: the Mirador Solar de Tristaina, opened in 2021, a working sundial you can walk out onto. A gondola now runs to La Coma in summer, and on the days it turns, cars may use the mountain road only within the resort's opening hours.