Mount Longonot National Park a mountain with many spurs, is a tour destination to experience Sheer adventure of flora, fauna and a sight of Longonot stratovolcano. The savannah ecosystem lies about 90km from Nairobi. The ecosystem mainly comprises of the mountain rising to 2,776m above sea level. On the sides of the mountain are V-shaped valleys and ridges with little vegetation; however a thick forest occurs within the crater. Major wildlife attractions include buffaloes, elands, lion, leopard, Bushbucks, common zebra, giraffe, grant gazelles, Thomson gazelles and many other antelopes. Other attractions include the extinct volcano and the crater forest, views of Lake Naivasha and the Great Rift Valley.
Mount Longonot is a stratovolcano located southeast of Lake Naivasha in the Great Rift Valley of Kenya, Africa. It is thought to have last erupted in the 1860s. Its name is derived from the Maasai word Oloonong'ot, meaning "mountains of many spurs" or "steep ridges".
Mount Longonot is protected by Kenya Wildlife Service as part of Mount Longonot National Park. A 3.1 km trail runs from the park entrance up to the crater rim, and continues in a 7.2 km loop encircling the crater. The whole tour (gate-around the rim-gate) of 13.5 km takes about 4–5 hours allowing for necessary rest breaks - parts of the trail are heavily eroded and very steep. The gate elevation is around 2150 m and the peak at 2780 m but following the jagged rim involves substantially more than the 630 m vertical difference.
Geology; Mount Longonot national park:
Longonot is a stratovolcano which contains a large 8 x 12 km caldera formed by vast eruptions of trachytic lava some 21,000 years ago. The current summit cone was developed within the earlier caldera. This cone itself is capped by a 1.8 km crater. The Mountain has several parasitic cones and effusive lava eruptions occur on the flanks and within the caldera floor. Periodic geodetic activity recorded at Longonot in 2004–2006 demonstrated the presence of active magmatic systems beneath this volcano
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A forest of small trees covers the crater floor, and small steam vents are found spaced around the walls of the crater. The mountain is home to various species of wildlife, notably plains zebra, giraffe, Thomson's gazelle, buffaloes and hartebeest. Mount Longonot is 60 kilometres northwest of Nairobi and may be reached from there by a tarmac road. A nearby town is also named Longonot. The Longonot satellite earth station is located south of the mountain.
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