The Amaro Mountains are a

mountain range A mountain range or hill range is a series of mountains or hills arranged in a line and connected by high ground. A mountain system or mountain belt is a group of mountain ranges with similarity in form, structure, and alignment that have arise ...

in south western

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...

. Extending 60 kilometers along a north–south axis east of Lake Chamo, these mountains are located in the Nechisar National Park, which lies in the Amaro special woreda. These elevations expose an assemblage of uniform, fine-grained,

holocrystalline Crystallinity refers to the degree of structural order in a solid. In a crystal, the atoms or molecules are arranged in a regular, periodic manner. The degree of crystallinity has a big influence on hardness, density, transparency and diffusion ...

olivine The mineral olivine () is a magnesium iron silicate with the chemical formula . It is a type of nesosilicate or orthosilicate. The primary component of the Earth's upper mantle, it is a common mineral in Earth's subsurface, but weathers quickl ...

basalt Basalt (; ) is an aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the surface of a rocky planet or moon. More than 90 ...

s with local

tuff Tuff is a type of rock made of volcanic ash ejected from a vent during a volcanic eruption. Following ejection and deposition, the ash is lithified into a solid rock. Rock that contains greater than 75% ash is considered tuff, while rock ...

bands, resting upon the basement complex. It is uncertain whether these mountains are a remnant plateau now looking down on the grabens to either side (the Gelana and Ganjule grabens), or if these mountains were squeezed up from the basement of the East African Rift, possibly by processes similar to those that formed the

Ruwenzori Mountains The Ruwenzori, also spelled Rwenzori and Rwenjura, are a range of mountains in eastern equatorial Africa, located on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The highest peak of the Ruwenzori reaches , and the range ...

."Local History in Ethiopia"
(pdf) The Nordic Africa Institute website (accessed 10 January 2009) Notable peaks in this mountain range include

Mount Delo Mount is often used as part of the name of specific mountains, e.g. Mount Everest. Mount or Mounts may also refer to: Places * Mount, Cornwall, a village in Warleggan parish, England * Mount, Perranzabuloe, a hamlet in Perranzabuloe parish, C ...

(3600 metres) and Mount Tabala (1650 metres). Tabala is known for its hot springs.

Vittorio Bottego Vittorio Bottego (; Parma, 29 July 1860 – Dhaga Roba, 17 March 1897) was an Italian army officer and one of the first Western explorers of Jubaland in the Horn of Africa (now part of Gidami, West Wellega Ethiopia), where he led two expedition ...

reached the top of the Amaro mountains on 23 March 1896, then visited Prince Eugene Ruspoli's grave before travelling on to Lake Abaya, which they named after Queen Margherita. The name "Amara" was used by

Arthur Donaldson Smith Arthur Donaldson Smith (1866–1939) was an American physician, hunter, and explorer of Africa. In the 1890s he made a geological expedition to Lake Rudolph (now Lake Turkana), passing through what was then Somaliland, southern Ethiopia and Kenya ...

when he wrote about his explorations in 1897, and Vannutelli (travelled here in 1899) called them the "Amarr". Early travelers who visited the range describe the higher summits as bare open downs, easy of access, with bamboo forests below. There is little mountaineering interest.

References

{{coord, 5, 50, N, 36, 38, E, region:ET_type:city, display=title Mountain ranges of Ethiopia Horsts (geology)