Aug 09
3
Claudius Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy
He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer and astrologer. He lived in Egypt under the Roman Empire, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the Thebaid. He died in Alexandria around AD 168.
In AD150, the Alexandrine geographer Ptolemy wrote of a snow capped mountain range, deep in the heart of Africa that, he claimed, was the source of the Nile and which he called the Mountains of the Moon. Over the centuries this curious notion of tropical snow faded into mythology and, when John Speke found the Nile’s exit from Lake Victoria, a place in fiction for the Mountains of the Moon seemed assured. But then, in 1889, Henry Stanley emerged from central Africa to announce that such a mountain did exist. He mapped it by its local name of Rwenjura – or ‘rainmaker’.
In due course mountaineers explored Ptolemy’s Mountains of the Moon. Though just miles north of the Equator, they found in the high Rwenzori glaciers and snow peaks whose meltwaters represent the highest springs ofthe Nile. These trickle downwards into U-shaped glacial valleys where, supplemented by up to 2500mm of rain/year, they saturate the broad valley floors to form great soggy bogs. Within these rain and mist filled troughs, loom specimens of Africa’s bizarre high altitude vegetation and stunted trees enveloped by colourful mosses and draped with beards of lichen.
JOIN US IN JANUARY 2011 TO EXPLORE AND CLIMB THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON FOR THE CHILDREN OF AFRICA.
We are now planning the adventure and if you are interested please contact me on 61 2 6927 6027 or within Australia (02) 6927 6027 or email:
John Glassford <john@glassford.com.au>
We will have two teams going one to climb and the other as our supporters or better known as the Gin and Tonic Team. We are also planning visits to the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and the gorillas or the chimpanzees at the Kibale Forest as well as a visit to the Queen Elizabeth National Park.
Tucker Time
Cheeky Chap
Come climb the beautiful