Rwenzori Mountains Africa

The Rwenzori Mountains, previously called the Ruwenzori Range (the spelling having been changed in about 1980 to conform more closely with the local name) is a small but spectacular mountain range of central Africa, often referred to as Mt. Rwenzori, located on the border between Uganda and the DRC, with heights of up to 5,109 m (16,761 ft). The highest Rwenzoris are permanently snow-capped, and they, along with Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya are the only such in Africa. The Rwenzoris are often identified with the "Mountains of the Moon" mentioned by Ptolemy, but the descriptions are too vague to make this definite.

The mountains formed about three million years ago in the late Pliocene as a result of an uplifted block of crystalline rocks such as: gneiss, amphibolite granite and quartzite, "pushed up by tremendous forces originating deep within the earth’s crust". This uplift divided the paleolake Obweruka and created two of the present-day African Great Lakes: Albert and Edward and George on the flanks of the Albertine (western) Rift of the East African Rift, the African part of the Great Rift Valley.

The range is about 120 km (75 mi) long and 65 km (40 mi) wide. It consists of six massifs separated by deep gorges: Mount Stanley (5,109m), Mount Speke (4,890m), Mount Baker (4,843m), Mount Emin (4,798m), Mount Gessi (4,715m) and Mount Luigi di Savoia (4,627m). Mount Stanley is the largest and has several subsidiary summits, with Margherita Peak being the highest point. The rock is metamorphic, and the mountains are believed to have been tilted and squeezed upwards by plate movement. They are in an extremely humid area, and frequently enveloped in clouds.

The Rwenzori range is the home of the Konjo and Amba peoples. In the early 1900s, these two tribes were added to the Toro Kingdom by the colonial powers. The Konjo and Amba agitated for separation from Toro beginning in the 1950s, a movement that became an armed secessionist movement, known as Rwenzururu, by the mid-1960s. The insurgency ended through a negotiated settlement in 1982, though the Rwenzururu Kingdom was acknowledged by the government in 2008.

The first modern European sighting of the Rwenzori was by the expedition of Henry Morton Stanley in 1889 (the aforementioned clouds are considered to explain why two decades of previous explorers had not seen them). On June 7, the expedition's second-in-command and its military commander, William Grant Stairs, climbed to 10,677 feet, the first known non-African ever to climb in the range. The first ascent to the summit was made by the Duke of the Abruzzi in 1906.

The Rwenzori are known for their vegetation, ranging from tropical rainforest through alpine meadows to snow; and for their animal population, including forest elephants, several primate species and many endemic birds. The range supports its own species and varieties of Giant groundsel and Giant lobelia and even has a six metre high heather covered in moss that lives on one of its peaks. Most of the range is now a World Heritage Site and is covered jointly by The Rwenzori Mountains National Park in Uganda and the Parc National des Virunga in Congo.

credited to wikipedia and flickr users: markhorrell, sylweczka, best_of_rob, hablia, makgobokgobo, hulivili