Mount Popomanaseu

Where is Mount Popomanaseu?

Mount Popomanaseu is part of the Guadalcanal.

You will find it in: the Solomon Islands.

Summit: 9.704° S, 160.062° E

The story behind it

Guadalcanal was pushed up out of the sea where two plates of the Earth's crust meet, and the middle of the island is a tangle of sharp ridges and narrow gorges, with Popomanaseu as the highest knot in that tangle. Rain falls nearly every afternoon, so rivers run brown and strong, and walkers wade through them many times on the way in, often sleeping in villages or under a tarpaulin in between. Near the summit the forest turns into cloud forest, where every branch is padded with moss and orchids and where the air stays wet all day long. Parrots and hornbills fly below the ridge line, and cuscus, shy tree-dwelling animals, sleep curled up in the canopy. The route is long, muddy and only sensible with guides from the villages who know the ridges.

Find it on the globe

Mount Popomanaseu 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.