Rwenzori Mountains

Geology

The mountains formed about three million years ago in the late Pliocene epoch and are the result of an uplifted block of crystalline rocks including gneiss, amphibolite, granite, and quartzite. They are on the flanks of the Albertine Rift, the western branch of the East African Rift.

This uplift divided the paleolake Obweruka and created three of the present-day African Great Lakes: Lake Albert, Lake Edward, and Lake George.

The range is about 120 kilometres (75 mi) long and 65 kilometres (40 mi) wide. It consists of six massifs separated by deep gorges: Mount Stanley (5,109 metres (16,762 ft)), Mount Speke (4,890 metres (16,040 ft)), Mount Baker (4,843 metres (15,889 ft)), Mount Emin (4,798 metres (15,741 ft)), Mount Gessi (4,715 metres (15,469 ft)), and Mount Luigi di Savoia (4,627 metres (15,180 ft)). Mount Stanley 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.

Human history

In 150 AD, the Alexandrian Greek geographer Ptolemy referred to a snowcapped massif in the heart of Africa by the name of Selenes oros, Latinized as "Lunae Montes", in English Mountains of the Moon. These are now widely accepted to be the Rwenzori Mountains.

The first modern European sighting of the Rwenzori was by the expedition of Henry Morton Stanley in 1889 (the clouds possibly being the reason previous explorers over two decades had not seen them). On 7 June, the expedition's second-in-command and its military commander, William Grant Stairs, climbed to 3,254 metres (10,676 ft), the first known non-African ever to climb in the range

John Edmund Sharrock Moore reached the snowline in 1900, attaining 14,900 feet and proved the existence of permanent glaciers.

The first ascent to the summit was made by the Duke of the Abruzzi in 1906. His expedition quickly made first ascents of all major snow and ice peaks, mapping their complex geography and leaving them with Italian names. His team consisted of mountain guides, biologists, surveyors, a geologist, photographers, and about 150 porters. Photographer Vittorio Sella took a number of photographs showing a now-vanished world. Sella's photographic work is conserved at the Museo Nazionale della Montagna in Turin and at the Istituto di Fotografia Alpina Vittorio Sella in Biella, both in Italy. The Makerere University, Uganda, also has a selection of his images.

The first traverse of the six massifs of the Rwenzori Mountains was done in 1975, starting on 27 January and ending on 13 February. The traverse was done by Polish climbers Janusz Chalecki, Stanisław Cholewa, and Leszek Czarnecki, with Mirosław Kuraś accompanying them on the last half of the traverse.^{[source needs translation]}

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 began to agitate for separation from Toro in the 1950s, a movement that became Rwenzururu, an armed secessionist movement, by the mid-1960s. The insurgency ended through a negotiated settlement in 1982, though the Rwenzururu Kingdom was acknowledged by the government in 2008.

Flora

The Rwenzori are known for their vegetation, ranging from tropical rainforest through alpine meadows to snow. 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 southwestern Uganda and the Virunga National Park in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Although the flora in the Rwenzori is closely related to that of other East-African high mountains it is much more luxuriant here. This is mainly a result of the high and regular rainfall in the area. The distribution of vegetation is for a good deal determined by the altitude. At higher elevations, certain genera of plants grow unusually large. Most surprising are the giant heathers, senecios and lobelias, which the Swedish botanist Olov Hedberg from the Uppsala University referred to as “botanical big game”. As the altitude increases, temperatures drop. The air also grows thinner, provoking intense radiation, even on clouded days. During the day the incoming radiation of ultraviolet and infrared light is fierce, while at night the outward radiation under a clear sky has a considerable cooling effect. The equatorial location dictates marked diurnal variations in temperature, whereas the seasonal differences are less important, as if it were summer every day, winter every night.

There is no water shortage in the Rwenzori. Yet several members of the afroalpine family resemble species that normally thrive in desert climates. The reason lies in their similar water economy. Although abundantly present, water is not always readily available to the afroalpine plants when they need it. The nightly frosts affect the sap transport in the plants, and the intake of water by its roots. As the day begins, the air temperature and radiation level rise rapidly, putting strenuous demands on the exposed parts of the plants. It is vital to meet the transpiration demands of the leaves, and maintain a proper water balance. To counter the effects of freezing, the afroalpine plants have developed the insulation systems which give them such a striking appearance. As a rule, these adaptive trends become more prominent as the altitude rises.

There are 5 vegetation zones in the Rwenzori Mountains. These are grassland (1000–2000 m), montane forest (2000–3000 m), bamboo/mimulopsis zone (2500–3500 m), heather/Rapanea zone (3000–4000 m) and the afro-alpine moorland zone (4000–4500 m). At higher altitudes, some plants reach an unusually large size, such as lobelia and groundsels. The vegetation in the Rwenzori Mountains is unique to equatorial alpine Africa.

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Fauna

The range is known for its animal populations, including forest elephants, several primate species, and many endemic birds.

Glacial recession in Rwenzori

An ongoing concern is the impact of climate change on Rwenzori's glaciers. In 1906, the Rwenzori had 43 named glaciers distributed over six mountains with a total area of 7.5 square kilometres (2.9 sq mi), about half the total glacier area in Africa. By 2005, less than half of these were still present, on only three mountains, with an area of about 1.5 square kilometres (0.58 sq mi). Recent scientific studies, such as those by Richard Taylor of University College London, have attributed this retreat to global climate change and have investigated the impact of this change on the mountain's vegetation and biodiversity.