Mount Baker or Kiyanja is a mountain in the

Rwenzori Mountains National Park Rwenzori Mountains National Park is a Ugandan national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in the Rwenzori Mountains. Almost in size, the park has Africa's third highest mountain peak and many waterfalls, lakes, and glaciers. The park i ...

Uganda }), is a landlocked country in East Africa East Africa, Eastern Africa, or East of Africa, is the eastern subregion of the African continent. In the United Nations Statistics Division scheme of geographic regions, 10-11-(16*) territor ...

, from the border with the

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

. With a height of , it is the sixth highest mountain in Africa. Together with

Mount Stanley Mount Stanley or Mount Ngaliema (, also , ) is a mountain located in the Rwenzori range. With an elevation of 5,109 m (16,763 ft), it is the highest mountain of both the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, and the third highest in ...

and

Mount Speke Mount Speke lies in the Ruwenzori Mountains National Park in Uganda and is the second highest mountain in this range. Together with Mount Stanley and Mount Baker (Ruwenzoris), Mount Baker, it forms a triangle enclosing the upper Bujuku Valley. Th ...

, it forms a triangle enclosing the upper Bujuku Valley. The nearest peak is Mount Stanley, which is to the west. The mountains lie within an area called "The Mountains of the Moon". Like all peaks in the Ruwenzori Range, Mount Baker has multiple jagged peaks along a ridge. The highest is Edward Peak. The ridge line of Mount Baker was first reached in January 1906 by the Austrian mountaineer

Rudolf Grauer Rudolf Grauer (20 August 1870, Hellbrunn, Salzburg – 17 December 1927, Vienna) was an Austrian explorer and zoologist. He conducted zoological investigations in British East Africa (present-day Uganda) in 1905, German East Africa in 1907, a ...

accompanied by two British missionaries, H. E. Maddox and H. W. Tegart. In February of that year and again in April, the same rocky point was reached by an English expedition, including Alexander F. R. Wollaston, A. B. Wosnam, and M. Carruthers.Climbing history before 1906
at www.rwenzoriabruzzi.com. The highest point of Mount Baker was finally climbed in June by an expedition led by the

Duke of the Abruzzi Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and sovereign princes. As royalty or nobility, they are ran ...

, which climbed all peaks of the other five highest mountains of the Rwenzori, . The

Bakonjo The BaKonzo (pl. ''Bakonzo'', sing. ''Mukonzo''), or Konzo, are a Bantu ethnic group located in the Rwenzori region of Southwest Uganda. Numbering 850,646 in the 2014 census, they live on the plains, hills and mountain sloping up to an altitude ...

name for the mountain seems to have been (and currently is) "Kiyanja". On his June 1891 expedition into the Ruwenzori, Franz Stuhlmann observed the peak and named it either "Semper" or "Ngemwimbi". Abruzzi renamed the mountain after

Samuel Baker Sir Samuel White Baker, Order of the Bath, KCB, Royal Society, FRS, Royal Geographical Society, FRGS (8 June 1821 – 30 December 1893) was an English List of explorers, explorer, Officer (armed forces), officer, naturalist, big game hunter, ...

, a 19th-century British explorer who in 1864 was the first European to sight and visit Lake Albert, just northeast of the Ruwenzori Mountains, and who had reported to glimpse "great mountainous masses away in the distance, to the south of Lake Albert."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Baker Rwenzori Mountains Mountains of Uganda Four-thousanders of Africa