Mount Bengoué

Where is Mount Bengoué?

Mount Bengoué is part of the Ogooué-Ivindo.

You will find it in: Gabon.

Summit: 0.950° N, 13.683° E

The story behind it

Bengoué is a broad, forested massif in the north-east of Gabon, and almost everything about it is hidden under leaves: the slopes, the boulders, the little streams that start near the top and feed the Ivindo river. It is not certain that this really is the country's highest ground, because the measurements differ by a few metres and other hills nearby have been suggested too. Rain falls here through most of the year, so the forest stays warm and dripping wet, with buttress roots, lianas and trees that hold their crowns far above the ground. Forest elephants, mandrills, hornbills and chimpanzees live in this part of the country, and many of them leave tracks along the muddy paths. Very few people walk up, since there is no marked route and the forest closes over any trail within a single season.

Find it on the globe

Mount Bengoué 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.