Africa's snowy Mountains of the Moon are losing their glaciers fast
Straddling the equator between Uganda and Congo, the Rwenzori carry permanent snow and ice, and explorers once matched them to Ptolemy's legendary Mountains of the Moon at the Nile's source. In 1906 they held 43 named glaciers. By 2005 fewer than half survived, clinging to just three peaks.
Unusually, these are neither volcanoes nor folded ranges. About three million years ago a block of ancient crystalline rock, including gneiss and granite, was pushed upward, making the Rwenzori the tallest mountains of their kind on Earth. That uplift split an ancient lake, Obweruka, and created Lakes Albert, Edward and George. Six massifs separated by deep gorges run along a range 120 kilometres long, topped by Margherita Peak on Mount Stanley at 5,109 metres.
Samuel Baker glimpsed what he called Blue Mountains in 1864, and Henry Stanley, visiting in 1875 and 1888, wrote down the name Ruwenzori. In 1906 the Duke of Abruzzi's expedition climbed the highest summits and named several of them. Its photographer, Vittorio Sella, captured glaciers and moraines that already showed signs of shrinking, images now kept in Turin and Biella. Polish climbers first traversed all six massifs in 1975.
The slopes climb through five vegetation zones, from evergreen forest and bamboo to heather, alpine meadow and bare snow. Oddly, in a place with plenty of water, many high-altitude plants resemble desert species. Nightly frost locks up water in their tissues and roots, then fierce morning sun demands it, so they insulate themselves, producing giant groundsels, towering lobelias and even a moss-draped heather six metres tall.
Measurements track the ice's decline. The 1906 glaciers covered 7.5 square kilometres, about half of Africa's glacier area; by 2005 barely 1.5 remained. In 2025 Project Pressure built the first 3D model of Mount Stanley's glaciers from drone images and found the Stanley Plateau glacier had lost 29.5 percent of its surface between 2020 and 2024, while plants crept higher up the slopes.
Source: Rwenzori Mountains
