Sugarloaf Mountain

Where is Sugarloaf Mountain?

Sugarloaf Mountain is part of the Coastal granite hills of Rio de Janeiro.

You will find it in: Brazil.

Summit: 22.949° S, 43.157° W

The story behind it

The rock is granite and quartz monzonite, worn smooth over millions of years into the rounded shape geologists call a bornhardt. Portuguese traders in the 16th century thought it looked like the clay mould used to ship blocks of sugar, and the name stuck. In 1817 the British nanny Henrietta Carstairs climbed to the top and planted a Union Jack there; a legend says a Portuguese climber later swapped it for his own flag. The engineer Augusto Ferreira Ramos suggested a cable car in 1907, and the line opened in 1912, the first in Brazil and the third of its kind in the world. The original wooden cabins ran for 61 years before bigger ones replaced them in 1973. Some sources give the height as 395 metres instead of 396, so you may see either number. Today the hills around the bay hold more than 270 climbing routes, one of the largest urban climbing areas anywhere.

Find it on the globe

Sugarloaf Mountain 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.