Mount Karisimbi

Where is Mount Karisimbi?

Mount Karisimbi is part of the Virunga volcanoes.

You will find it in: Rwanda.

Summit: 1.508° S, 29.445° E

The story behind it

The Virunga chain is a row of eight big volcanoes standing along the western branch of the Great Rift Valley, and Karisimbi is the tallest of them. It is a stratovolcano, built up in layers of lava and ash, and its last eruption is thought to have happened around ten thousand years ago, though the date is not certain. The name is usually explained from the Kinyarwanda word amasimbi, said to refer to the white cap that appears on the summit in the dry months from June to August; you will find this explanation in many places, but a solid source for it is hard to pin down. The upper slopes are cold, damp and open, with tussock grass and mosses instead of forest. Below that forest belt live mountain gorillas, and it was here, on the saddle between Karisimbi and neighbouring Bisoke, that Dian Fossey set up the Karisoke Research Center to study them. The summit is in Rwanda, right beside the border with the DR Congo, and this border area is not always calm, so climbers go with park guides. Nobody seems to have written down who first stood on top, so the first ascent is left blank here.

Find it on the globe

Mount Karisimbi is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.