Andorra holds around seventy lakes, nearly all of them glacial cirque lakes sitting between 2,000 and 2,600 metres. Because the country is small, most are within a two-hour walk of a road — an unusual combination in the Pyrenees.
Tristaina
The Estanys de Tristaina, above Ordino-Arcalís, are the easiest to reach and the most photographed: three lakes in a granite bowl, linked by a two-hour circular path. In high summer a chairlift runs and cuts the climb to almost nothing, which makes this the right choice for anyone not confident on mountain paths or travelling with children.
Pessons
The Circ dels Pessons, above Grau Roig, is the largest concentration — a dozen or more lakes stepped up a granite amphitheatre, with the highest at around 2,600 metres. The full loop takes about four hours. It is the walk that gives the clearest sense of how the Andorran high country is built.
Juclar
Estany de Juclar, at the head of the Vall d'Incles, is the largest lake in the country and one of the quietest. Allow around four hours return from the valley shuttle stop. A refuge sits beside it, and the path continues over the border into the French Ariège.
Engolasters
Engolasters is different in kind: a low reservoir at 1,600 metres, twenty minutes above the capital, surrounded by pine forest and served by a level path suitable for pushchairs. It is where locals walk on a Sunday, and it makes an easy first afternoon while you adjust to the altitude.
When to go
Most high lakes stay frozen or partly frozen into June, and some north-facing ones hold ice into early July. The reliable window is July to early October. September is the best month: stable weather, no crowds, low water and clear reflections. Do not drink from the lakes — livestock graze these pastures all summer — and remember that swimming, while not forbidden, is in water that rarely rises above ten degrees.
A practical note
Signposting is good and paths are well marked, but phone coverage in the upper valleys is patchy and weather changes quickly above 2,000 metres. Take a windproof layer even on a hot day, and start early enough to be down before the afternoon storms that build regularly in midsummer.
How the lakes formed
These are cirque lakes, scooped out by glaciers during the last ice age and dammed behind rock lips or moraine. That is why they sit in stepped chains: each hollow was gouged where ice accumulated below a headwall, and meltwater now spills from one to the next. The Pessons bowl shows the sequence more clearly than almost anywhere else in the range.