Pico da Neblina

Pico da Neblina (Portuguese pronunciation:, literally "Mist Peak") is the highest mountain in Brazil, at 2,995.30 metres (9,827 ft) above sea level. It rises in northwestern Amazonas, in the Serra da Neblina of the Serra do Imeri, near the southern edge of the Guiana Highlands. The summit lies about 687 m (2,254 ft) inside Brazil. Nearby Pico 31 de Março, the country's second-highest summit at 2,974.18 m (9,758 ft), lies directly on the Brazil–Venezuela border. Pico da Neblina is the highest point of the Guiana Shield and the highest point in South America east of the Andean cordilleras.

Yanomami communities of the Cauaburis region call the mountain Yaripo, usually translated as "Mountain of the Winds". The name also covers the high ridge carrying Pico da Neblina and Pico 31 de Março. Yaripo is sacred in Yanomami belief. Sites along the route to the summit figure in ancestral stories and in rituals concerning spirits and the natural world. The summit is inside Pico da Neblina National Park and the Yanomami Indigenous Territory. The Brazilian national park was created in 1979.

The mountain rises steeply above the lowlands of the upper Rio Negro basin. Resistant quartz-rich rocks form much of the upper mountain, where narrow ridges and escarpments rise above high ground exceeding 2,000 m (6,600 ft). Temperature falls sharply with elevation, and rain, cloud and mist keep the upper slopes wet for long periods. Amazonian rainforest at lower elevations changes into montane forest and, higher up, low shrubs, herbs, exposed rock and saturated ground. Some species of the upper massif occur nowhere else, or in only a few other parts of the Guiana Highlands. Among them are the frogs Neblinaphryne mayeri and Caligophryne doylei. Their nearest living relatives diverged from them more than 45 million years ago.

Naturalists had seen the mountains from the Rio Negro by the nineteenth century, but expeditions began entering the upper massif in the 1950s. Brazilian topographer José Ambrósio de Miranda Pombo made the first known ascent of Pico da Neblina in 1965 while working on the Brazil–Venezuela boundary. Tourist climbing grew during the late twentieth century, then stopped in 2003 after disputes over entry into Yanomami territory and damage inside the national park. Visits resumed in 2022 under the Yanomami-run Yaripo ecotourism program. Illegal gold mining, hunting and unauthorized entry still affect the protected lands around the mountain, while species confined to the highest elevations face risks from warming and amphibian disease.