How High is Mount Kilimanjaro?

Really three volcanoes in one, the soaring profile of the highest mountain in Africa was built up by a complex series of eruptions. Rising majestically above the plains of Tanzania near the Kenyan border is the towering, snow-covered summit of Kilimanjaro. With a maximum ele-vation of 19,340 feet (5,895 meters) above sea level, it is the highest as well as the most celebrated mountain in Africa. Its profile is all the more impressive since it stands in splendid isolation, with no adjoining peaks to detract from its beauty. Looming some 16,000 feet (4,900 meters) above the plains that spread out from its base, it dominates its surroundings.

Massive and complex, Kilimanjaro covers an area about 60 miles (100 kilometers) long and 40 miles (65 ki-lometers) wide. It is composed of not one but three separate volcanoes that began erupting within the last 2 mil¬lion years; their lava fields overlapped and partially obliterated each other. At the center is the culminating massif named Kibo, flanked by the lower summits of Mawenzi to the east and Shira to the west.

Shira, the oldest and most eroded of the three, was once much higher than it is today. Following a violent, explosive eruption, its summit collapsed and then was further reduced by erosion. It now forms a plateau that only reaches 12,395 feet (3,778 meters).

Mawenzi, the second oldest of the summits, appears from a distance to be nothing more than a bulge on the side of Kibo. Yet it is a well-defined rocky peak that reaches 17,564 feet (5,354 meters). Linked to Kibo by a saddle about 7 miles (11 kilometers) long, its craggy, deeply eroded summit is bounded by high, steep cliffs.

Kibo, the central and highest part of the Kilimanjaro complex, was built up during several eruptive cycles. From the plains its summit looks like a gently rounded, snowcapped dome. In fact it is topped by a caldera, a broad, basinlike depression about 11/4 miles (2 kilometers) in diameter that was formed by the collapse of a once much higher summit.

Within the caldera subsequent eruptions built up a second volcanic cone with a crater some2,950 feet (900 meters) across. And this in turn is partially filled by a cinder cone that was built up by a third eruption.

Because of its great height, Kilimanjaro influences its own weather. Winds blowing in from the Indian Ocean are deflected upward by the slopes and drop their moisture as rain and snow. The result is a variety of vegetation zones that contrast dramatically with the savanna grasses and the semidesert scrub on the sur-rounding plains The lower slopes were probably once forested but have now been cleared for the cultivation of coffee, corn, and other crops.

This is followed by a belt of tropical rain forest, which extends up to about 9,800 feet (3,000 meters). The forest in turn gives way to grasslands and moorlands, which, at about 14,500 feet (4,400 meters), are replaced by high-altitude desert where little more than lichens can survive. Finally, at the highest elevations, there is the zone of permanent ice and snow that is responsible for the name Kilimanjaro, which in Swahili means “the mountain that glitters.”

Sarah writes the Czech Republic Travel Guide.