Monte Roraima
Encyclopedia
Mount Roraima is the highest of the Pakaraima chain of tepui
plateau
in South America
. First described by the English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh
in 1596, its summit area is defended by 400-metre-tall cliffs on all sides. The mountain includes the triple border point of Venezuela
, Brazil
and Guyana
.
Mount Roraima lies on the Guiana Shield in the southeastern corner of Venezuela's Canaima National Park
forming the highest peak of Guyana's Highland Range. The tabletop mountains of the park are considered some of the oldest geological formations on Earth
, dating back to some two billion years ago in the Precambrian
.
The highest point in Guyana and the highest point of the Brazilian state of Roraima
lie on the plateau, but Venezuela and Brazil have higher mountains elsewhere. The triple border point is at 5°12′08"N 60°44′07"W, but the mountain's highest point is Maverick Rock, , at the south end of the plateau and wholly within Venezuela.
s, Campanula
(a bellflower), and the rare Rapatea heather are commonly found on the escarpment and summit. It rains almost every day of the year. Almost the entire surface of the summit is bare sandstone
, with only a few bushes (Bonnetia roraimœ
) and algae
present. "[L]ow scanty and bristling vegetation" is also found in the small, sandy marshes that intersperse the rocky summit. Most of the nutrient
s that are present in the soil are washed away by torrents that cascade over the edge, forming some of the highest waterfalls in the world.
see Roraima as the stump of a mighty tree that once held all the fruits and tuberous vegetables in the world. Felled by one of their ancestors, the tree crashed to the ground, unleashing a terrible flood. Roroi in the Pemon language means blue-green and ma means great.
In 2006, Mount Roraima was the destination for the award-winning Gryphon Productions two hour television documentary The Real Lost World
. The program was shown on Animal Planet
, Discovery HD Theater
and OLN (Canada). Directed by Peter von Puttkamer
, this travel/adventure documentary featured a modern team of explorers: Rick West, Dr. Hazel Barton, Seth Heald, Dean Harrison and Peter Sprouse who followed in the footsteps of British explorers Im Thurn and Harry Perkins who sought the flora and fauna of Roraima in the mid-19th century. The adventures of those explorers may have inspired Arthur Conan Doyle
's seminal book about people and dinosaurs, The Lost World, published in 1912. In 2006, The Real Lost World
team were the first scientific team to explore the caves of Roraima, only recently discovered. Inside they found intriguing "carrot" formations growing in the 2 billion year old caves. Dr. Hazel Barton returned in 2007 on a NASA funded expedition to investigate the features growing on the cave walls and ceiling: evidence of extremophile
cave microbes eating the silica-based walls of the cave and leaving dusty deposits on ancient spiderwebs, forming these unique stalactite type shapes. They could provide clues to how life forms and survives on other planets.
In 2009, Mount Roraima served as inspiration for a location in the Disney/Pixar
animated movie Up
. The Blu-ray version of the movie disc bonus footage features a short film (called Adventure Is Out There) about some of the Pixar
production team going to Mount Roraima and climbing it for inspiration and ideas for the making of Up.
Although the steep sides of the plateau make it difficult to access, it was the first major tepui
to be climbed: Sir Everard im Thurn
walked up a forested ramp in December 1884 to scale the plateau. This is the same route hikers take today.
Today, Mount Roraima is a destination for backpackers. Almost all who go up the mountain approach it from the Venezuelan side. Most hikers hire a Pemon Indian guide in the village of Paraitepui, which is reached by dirt road from the main Gran Sabana
road between kilometre 88 and Santa Elena de Uairen. Although the path to reach the plateau is well marked and popularly traveled, it is easy to get lost on top of the mountain, as there are few distinct trails and the near constant cloud cover on top and the uncanny rock formations make visual references problematic. Paraitepui can be reached easily by four wheel drive vehicle, with great difficulty by car if the unpaved road conditions are unusually fine, or by foot in about a day.
From Paraitepui, most hikers take one day to reach the base of the mountain, and then another day to follow "La Rampa" a natural staircase-like path, up to the top. Another two days are typically needed for the return, and many people spend one day and night on top of the mountain, making five days in total. Longer treks can reach the northern portion of the tepui, mostly in Guyana, with less explored and more intriguing sites such as Lake Gladys, although this offers more dangers than its more popular southern part and should only be attempted by well-supplied groups. The less adventurous can also reach the mountain, weather permitting, by helicopter tours available from the nearby Venezuelan city of Santa Elena de Uairén
.
The only non-technical route to the top is the Paraitepui route; any other approach will involve climbing gear. Mount Roraima has been climbed on a few occasions from the Guyana and Brazil sides, but as the mountain is entirely bordered on both these sides by enormous sheer cliffs that include high overhanging (negative-inclination) stretches, these are extremely difficult and technical rock climbing
routes. Such climbs would also require difficult authorizations for entering restricted-access national parks in the respective countries. , climbing from the Brazilian side would be particularly problematic, due to the access being through Raposa-Serra do Sol
Amerindian reserve
, where armed conflicts between the natives, white rice farmers and the authorities have been frequent.
Tepui
A tepui , or tepuy, is a table-top mountain or mesa found in the Guiana Highlands of South America, especially in Venezuela. The word tepui means "house of the gods" in the native tongue of the Pemon, the indigenous people who inhabit the Gran Sabana....
plateau
Plateau
In geology and earth science, a plateau , also called a high plain or tableland, is an area of highland, usually consisting of relatively flat terrain. A highly eroded plateau is called a dissected plateau...
in South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
. First described by the English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh
Walter Raleigh
Sir Walter Raleigh was an English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer. He is also well known for popularising tobacco in England....
in 1596, its summit area is defended by 400-metre-tall cliffs on all sides. The mountain includes the triple border point of Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
, Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
and Guyana
Guyana
Guyana , officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, previously the colony of British Guiana, is a sovereign state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana was a former colony of the Dutch and of the British...
.
Mount Roraima lies on the Guiana Shield in the southeastern corner of Venezuela's Canaima National Park
Canaima National Park
Canaima National Park is a 30,000 km² park in south-eastern Venezuela that borders Brazil and Guyana. It is located in Bolívar State, and roughly occupies the same area as the Gran Sabana region....
forming the highest peak of Guyana's Highland Range. The tabletop mountains of the park are considered some of the oldest geological formations on Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
, dating back to some two billion years ago in the Precambrian
Precambrian
The Precambrian is the name which describes the large span of time in Earth's history before the current Phanerozoic Eon, and is a Supereon divided into several eons of the geologic time scale...
.
The highest point in Guyana and the highest point of the Brazilian state of Roraima
Roraima
Roraima is the northernmost and least populated state of Brazil, located in the Amazon region. It borders the states of Amazonas and Pará, as well as the nations of Venezuela and Guyana. The population is 400,000 and the capital is Boa Vista...
lie on the plateau, but Venezuela and Brazil have higher mountains elsewhere. The triple border point is at 5°12′08"N 60°44′07"W, but the mountain's highest point is Maverick Rock, , at the south end of the plateau and wholly within Venezuela.
Flora and fauna
Many of the species found on Roraima are unique to the plateau. Plants such as pitcher plantPitcher plant
Pitcher plants are carnivorous plants whose prey-trapping mechanism features a deep cavity filled with liquid known as a pitfall trap. It has been widely assumed that the various sorts of pitfall trap evolved from rolled leaves, with selection pressure favouring more deeply cupped leaves over...
s, Campanula
Campanula
Campanula is one of several genera in the family Campanulaceae with the common name bellflower. It takes its name from their bell-shaped flowers—campanula is Latin for "little bell"....
(a bellflower), and the rare Rapatea heather are commonly found on the escarpment and summit. It rains almost every day of the year. Almost the entire surface of the summit is bare sandstone
Sandstone
Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...
, with only a few bushes (Bonnetia roraimœ
Bonnetia
Bonnetia is a genus of flowering plant in the Bonnetiaceae family. It was previously placed in the Clusiaceae family.Species include:* Bonnetia bolivarensis* Bonnetia celiae* Bonnetia chimantensis* Bonnetia cordifolia...
) and algae
Algae
Algae are a large and diverse group of simple, typically autotrophic organisms, ranging from unicellular to multicellular forms, such as the giant kelps that grow to 65 meters in length. They are photosynthetic like plants, and "simple" because their tissues are not organized into the many...
present. "[L]ow scanty and bristling vegetation" is also found in the small, sandy marshes that intersperse the rocky summit. Most of the nutrient
Nutrient
A nutrient is a chemical that an organism needs to live and grow or a substance used in an organism's metabolism which must be taken in from its environment. They are used to build and repair tissues, regulate body processes and are converted to and used as energy...
s that are present in the soil are washed away by torrents that cascade over the edge, forming some of the highest waterfalls in the world.
Culture
Since long before the arrival of European explorers, the mountain has held a special significance for the indigenous people of the region, and it is central to many of their myths and legends. The Pemon Indians of the Gran SabanaLa Gran Sabana
The Gran Sabana is an important natural attraction in Venezuela, located in the south of Bolívar State on the Venezuelan-Brazilian border, approximately 1,400 km from Caracas. The area has a tropical humid climate with an average temperature of 28 °C, but at night it can go down to 13 °C...
see Roraima as the stump of a mighty tree that once held all the fruits and tuberous vegetables in the world. Felled by one of their ancestors, the tree crashed to the ground, unleashing a terrible flood. Roroi in the Pemon language means blue-green and ma means great.
In 2006, Mount Roraima was the destination for the award-winning Gryphon Productions two hour television documentary The Real Lost World
The Real Lost World
The Real Lost World is a documentary, released on December 10, 2006 by Animal Planet, where a team of scientists journey to Monte Roraima in Venezuela, the plateau that inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's literary work, The Lost World. They investigate the legend...
. The program was shown on Animal Planet
Animal Planet
Animal Planet is an American cable tv specialty channel that launched on October 1, 1996. It is distributed by Discovery Communications. A high-definition simulcast of the channel launched on September 1, 2007.-History:...
, Discovery HD Theater
Discovery HD Theater
Velocity is an American high-definition, commercial-based, cable- and satellite-television channel owned by Discovery Communications...
and OLN (Canada). Directed by Peter von Puttkamer
Peter von Puttkamer
Peter von Puttkamer is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, with special interest in environmental issues and in American indigenous peoples and cultures.-Early years:Von Puttkamer was born Baron Marc Peter von Puttkamer, in Bonn, Germany in 1957...
, this travel/adventure documentary featured a modern team of explorers: Rick West, Dr. Hazel Barton, Seth Heald, Dean Harrison and Peter Sprouse who followed in the footsteps of British explorers Im Thurn and Harry Perkins who sought the flora and fauna of Roraima in the mid-19th century. The adventures of those explorers may have inspired Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...
's seminal book about people and dinosaurs, The Lost World, published in 1912. In 2006, The Real Lost World
The Real Lost World
The Real Lost World is a documentary, released on December 10, 2006 by Animal Planet, where a team of scientists journey to Monte Roraima in Venezuela, the plateau that inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's literary work, The Lost World. They investigate the legend...
team were the first scientific team to explore the caves of Roraima, only recently discovered. Inside they found intriguing "carrot" formations growing in the 2 billion year old caves. Dr. Hazel Barton returned in 2007 on a NASA funded expedition to investigate the features growing on the cave walls and ceiling: evidence of extremophile
Extremophile
An extremophile is an organism that thrives in physically or geochemically extreme conditions that are detrimental to most life on Earth. In contrast, organisms that live in more moderate environments may be termed mesophiles or neutrophiles...
cave microbes eating the silica-based walls of the cave and leaving dusty deposits on ancient spiderwebs, forming these unique stalactite type shapes. They could provide clues to how life forms and survives on other planets.
In 2009, Mount Roraima served as inspiration for a location in the Disney/Pixar
Pixar
Pixar Animation Studios, pronounced , is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio has earned 26 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and three Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Its films have made over $6.3 billion worldwide...
animated movie Up
Up (2009 film)
Up is a 2009 American computer-animated comedy-adventure film produced by Pixar, distributed by Walt Disney Pictures and presented in Disney Digital 3-D. The film premiered on May 29, 2009 in North America and opened the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first animated and 3D film...
. The Blu-ray version of the movie disc bonus footage features a short film (called Adventure Is Out There) about some of the Pixar
Pixar
Pixar Animation Studios, pronounced , is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio has earned 26 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and three Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Its films have made over $6.3 billion worldwide...
production team going to Mount Roraima and climbing it for inspiration and ideas for the making of Up.
Ascensions
Tepui
A tepui , or tepuy, is a table-top mountain or mesa found in the Guiana Highlands of South America, especially in Venezuela. The word tepui means "house of the gods" in the native tongue of the Pemon, the indigenous people who inhabit the Gran Sabana....
to be climbed: Sir Everard im Thurn
Everard F. im Thurn
Everard Ferdinand im Thurn was an author, explorer, botanist, photographer and Governor of Fiji. He was educated at Oxford University, Edinburgh University, and Sydney University...
walked up a forested ramp in December 1884 to scale the plateau. This is the same route hikers take today.
Today, Mount Roraima is a destination for backpackers. Almost all who go up the mountain approach it from the Venezuelan side. Most hikers hire a Pemon Indian guide in the village of Paraitepui, which is reached by dirt road from the main Gran Sabana
La Gran Sabana
The Gran Sabana is an important natural attraction in Venezuela, located in the south of Bolívar State on the Venezuelan-Brazilian border, approximately 1,400 km from Caracas. The area has a tropical humid climate with an average temperature of 28 °C, but at night it can go down to 13 °C...
road between kilometre 88 and Santa Elena de Uairen. Although the path to reach the plateau is well marked and popularly traveled, it is easy to get lost on top of the mountain, as there are few distinct trails and the near constant cloud cover on top and the uncanny rock formations make visual references problematic. Paraitepui can be reached easily by four wheel drive vehicle, with great difficulty by car if the unpaved road conditions are unusually fine, or by foot in about a day.
From Paraitepui, most hikers take one day to reach the base of the mountain, and then another day to follow "La Rampa" a natural staircase-like path, up to the top. Another two days are typically needed for the return, and many people spend one day and night on top of the mountain, making five days in total. Longer treks can reach the northern portion of the tepui, mostly in Guyana, with less explored and more intriguing sites such as Lake Gladys, although this offers more dangers than its more popular southern part and should only be attempted by well-supplied groups. The less adventurous can also reach the mountain, weather permitting, by helicopter tours available from the nearby Venezuelan city of Santa Elena de Uairén
Santa Elena de Uairen
Santa Elena de Uairén is a small Venezuelan city in the state of Bolívar near the border with Brazil and Guyana. It was Founded by Lucas Fernandez Peña in 1923...
.
The only non-technical route to the top is the Paraitepui route; any other approach will involve climbing gear. Mount Roraima has been climbed on a few occasions from the Guyana and Brazil sides, but as the mountain is entirely bordered on both these sides by enormous sheer cliffs that include high overhanging (negative-inclination) stretches, these are extremely difficult and technical rock climbing
Rock climbing
Rock climbing also lightly called 'The Gravity Game', is a sport in which participants climb up, down or across natural rock formations or artificial rock walls. The goal is to reach the summit of a formation or the endpoint of a pre-defined route without falling...
routes. Such climbs would also require difficult authorizations for entering restricted-access national parks in the respective countries. , climbing from the Brazilian side would be particularly problematic, due to the access being through Raposa-Serra do Sol
Raposa Serra Do Sol
Reserva Indígena Raposa/Serra do Sol is an Indian reservation in Brazil, intended to be home to the Macuxi people...
Amerindian reserve
Reserve
-Economic:* Official gold reserves, held by central banks as a store of value* Foreign exchange reserves, the foreign currency deposits held by central banks and monetary authorities...
, where armed conflicts between the natives, white rice farmers and the authorities have been frequent.