Mount Kilimanjaro

Mount Kilimanjaro is a large stratovolcano in northeastern Tanzania, reaching about 5,895 meters at Uhuru Peak on its Kibo cone, making it both the tallest mountain in Africa and the tallest freestanding mountain in the world, rising almost directly from surrounding plains rather than as part of a connected range. It is built from three distinct volcanic cones formed over roughly a million years of eruptive activity: Shira, the oldest and now heavily eroded into a broad plateau; Mawenzi, a jagged, deeply eroded extinct cone to the east; and Kibo, the youngest, tallest and only cone still considered potentially active, its own summit crater largely intact. Despite lying just south of the equator, Kibo's summit historically carried extensive glaciers and an ice cap, though these have retreated dramatically over the past century and are projected to disappear entirely within a matter of decades, a widely cited marker of contemporary climate change in tropical high-altitude environments. Because its route to the summit involves no technical climbing, Kilimanjaro is one of the most frequently climbed of the world's tallest peaks, drawing tens of thousands of trekkers annually through Kilimanjaro National Park. This entity documents Mount Kilimanjaro specifically as a geological formation, a three-coned stratovolcano and the tallest freestanding mountain on Earth.