Rwenzori Mountains

Rwenzori in larger geographical context

Margherita Peak on Mount Stanley is the highest point in the range.

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.[2]

The Rwenzori mountains are the highest non-volcanic, non-orogenic mountains in the world.[3]

This uplift divided the paleolake Obweruka and created three of the present-day African Great Lakes: Lake Albert, Lake Edward,[2] and Lake George.[4]

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)).[5] Mount Stanley has several subsidiary summits, with Margherita Peak being the highest point.

House and people in Kasese District, Uganda

The mountains are occasionally identified with the legendary "Mountains of the Moon", described in antiquity as the source of the Nile River.[1] Modern European explorers observed the range beginning in the late nineteenth century, with Samuel Baker reporting what he called the "Blue Mountains" looming in the distance in 1864, and Henry M. Stanley visiting the range in 1875 and 1888, when he recorded the name as "Ruwenzori".[6]

In 1906, the Duke of Abruzzi mounted an expedition to the Ruwenzori, the account of which was subsequently published by Filippo De Filippi. The expedition scaled the highest peaks of the range, several of which were named by the duke, while Mount Luigi di Savoia was named in his honour.[6] Accompanying the duke was photographer Vittorio Sella, who had previously visited the mountains. His photographs of the glaciers and moraines of the Ruwenzori demonstrated that the glaciers were already in retreat.[6][7] 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.[8]

The first traverse of the six massifs of the Ruwenzori 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.[9]

Since Uganda's independence from the British Empire, the Rwenzori Mountains have repeatedly become sanctuaries to rebel groups. The secessionist Rwenzururu movement fought an insurgency in the mountains in the 1960s.[10] In course of the Ugandan Bush War, the Rwenzururu movement reemerged and continued its struggle until signing a peace deal with Ugandan President Milton Obote's government.[11] In the Bush War's later stages, the National Resistance Army (NRA) rebel force operated in the mountains. After the NRA seized power in Uganda in 1986,[12] another civil war broke out. This time, the Rwenzori Mountains hosted the bases of the National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (NALU)[13] and the "Partie de Liberation Congolaise" (PLC), an anti-Mobutu rebel group.[14] In the early 1990s, a Congolese rebel group known as the National Council of Resistance for Democracy (Conseil National de Résistance pour la Démocratie, CNRD) led by André Kisase Ngandu began to wage an insurgency against Mobutu from the Rwenzori Mountains.[15]

Militias aligned with the old Rwenzururu movement's ideology occupied the Rwenzori Mountains from 1997 to June 2001.[16] In 2020, after being defeated across the border by the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, some elements of the Allied Democratic Forces moved into the Rwenzori Mountains.[17]

1906 (top left, archive) and 2022 (bottom left) comparative images of Mt Stanley 2012 (top right) and 2022 (bottom right) comparative imgaes of West Stanley Glacier - altitude 4910 m asl created by Klaus Thymann on Project Pressure Expeditions

Ornithologist James P. Chapin on a Ruwenzori expedition under flag of The Explorers Club, 1925

An ongoing concern is the impact of climate change on the Ruwenzori's glaciers. In 1906, forty-three named glaciers were 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.[21][22][23] In 2012 Klaus Thymann led an expedition with the environmental charity Project Pressure creating comparative photographs to visually document the glacier recession, the findings were published in global media including BBC One Planet[24] and The Guardian.[25] The alteration can be seen in comparative images. As the temperature rises and the glaciers recede, vegetation slowly creeps up the mountain.

Comparative Image 2012. Mount Stanley (right) and Speke (left)

• 1966 Toro earthquake

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ruwenzori Range.

Wikisource has the text of the 1920 Encyclopedia Americana article Ruwenzori.

• World Wildlife Fund, ed. (2001). "Ruwenzoris". WildWorld Ecoregion Profile. National Geographic Society. Archived from the original on 8 March 2010.
• UWM.edu: 1937 aerial photographs of Rwenzori Mountains – University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries Digital Collections.
• Beach, Chandler B., ed. (1914). "Ruwenzori" . The New Student's Reference Work . Chicago: F. E. Compton and Co.