The Amaro Mountains are a mountain range

Mountain range

A mountain range is a single, large mass consisting of a succession of mountains or narrowly spaced mountain ridges, with or without peaks, closely related in position, direction, formation, and age; a component part of a mountain system or of a mountain chain...

 in south western Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

. Extending 60 kilometers along a north-south axis east of Lake Chamo

Lake Chamo

Lake Chamo is a lake in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region of southern Ethiopia. It is located in the Great Rift Valley at an elevation of 1,110 meters. It is just to the south of Lake Abaya and the city of Arba Minch, and east of the Guge Mountains.The lake's northern end...

, these mountains are located in the Nechisar National Park

Nechisar National Park

Nechisar National Park is one of the National Parks of Ethiopia. Located in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region immediately to the east of Arba Minch, its 514 square kilometers of territory include the "Bridge of God" , and the Nechisar plains east of the lakes...

, which lies in the Amaro special woreda

Amaro special woreda

Amaro is one of the 79 woredas in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region of Ethiopia. Because Amaro is not part of any Zone in the SNNPR, it is considered a special woreda, an administrative subdivision which is similar to an autonomous area...

. These elevations expose an assemblage of uniform, fine-grained, holocrystalline olivine

Olivine

The mineral olivine is a magnesium iron silicate with the formula 2SiO4. It is a common mineral in the Earth's subsurface but weathers quickly on the surface....

-basalt

Basalt

Basalt is a common extrusive volcanic rock. It is usually grey to black and fine-grained due to rapid cooling of lava at the surface of a planet. It may be porphyritic containing larger crystals in a fine matrix, or vesicular, or frothy scoria. Unweathered basalt is black or grey...

s with local tuff

Tuff

Tuff is a type of rock consisting of consolidated volcanic ash ejected from vents during a volcanic eruption. Tuff is sometimes called tufa, particularly when used as construction material, although tufa also refers to a quite different rock. Rock that contains greater than 50% tuff is considered...

 bands, resting upon the basement complex. It is uncertain whether these mountains are a remnant plateau now looking down on the graben

Graben

In geology, a graben is a depressed block of land bordered by parallel faults. Graben is German for ditch. Graben is used for both the singular and plural....

s to either side (the Gelana and Ganjule grabens, or if these mountains were squeezed up from the basement

Basement (geology)

In geology, the terms basement and crystalline basement are used to define the rocks below a sedimentary platform or cover, or more generally any rock below sedimentary rocks or sedimentary basins that are metamorphic or igneous in origin...

 of the Great Rift Valley

Great Rift Valley

The Great Rift Valley is a name given in the late 19th century by British explorer John Walter Gregory to the continuous geographic trench, approximately in length, that runs from northern Syria in Southwest Asia to central Mozambique in South East Africa...

, possibly by processes similar to those that formed the Ruwenzori Mountains.

Notable peaks in this mountain range include Mount Delo (3240 metres) and Mount Tabala (1650 metres). Tabala is known for its hot springs

Hot Springs

Hot Springs may refer to:* Hot Springs, Arkansas** Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas*Hot Springs, California**Hot Springs, Lassen County, California**Hot Springs, Modoc County, California**Hot Springs, Placer County, California...

. Vittorio Bottego

Vittorio Bottego

Vittorio Bottego was an Italian army officer and one of the first Western explorers of Jubaland in the Horn of Africa , where he led two expeditions. Bottego was born in Parma....

 reached the top of the Amaro mountains on 23 March 1896, then visited Prince Eugene Ruspoli's grave before travelling on to Lake Abaya

Lake Abaya

Lake Abaya is a lake in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region of Ethiopia. It was named Lake Margherita by the Italian explorer Vittorio Bottego, the first European commonly thought to visit the lake, to honor the wife of king Umberto I of Italy, Queen Margherita...

, which they named after Queen Margherita

Margherita of Savoy

Margherita of Savoy , was the Queen consort of the Kingdom of Italy during the reign of her husband, Umberto I.-Family:...

. The name "Amara" was used by Arthur Donaldson Smith

Arthur Donaldson Smith

Dr. Arthur Donaldson Smith was an American explorer of Africa. In the 1890s he made a geological expedition to Lake Rudolph , passing through what was then Somaliland, southern Ethiopia and Kenya.-External links:*...

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.