Ras Dashen

Ras Dashen rises 14,928 feet in the Simien Mountains, the highest peak in Ethiopia and one of the highest summits in Africa. It is not a mountain in the classic sense but the high point of an ancient volcanic plateau, built from layered basalt and then cut apart by millions of years of erosion. The surrounding Simien massif, protected as a national park, is home to gelada monkeys and the endangered walia ibex, wildlife found nowhere else on Earth.

This map shows topography turned inside out. Instead of a cone rising from a plain, the contour lines describe a broad tableland dissected by enormous gorges, with escarpment walls that drop thousands of feet in tight bands of lines. Flat-topped ridges and isolated buttes stand between the drainages that carry water down toward the Tekeze River. The print captures the strange architecture of the Simiens, a landscape often compared to a fortress of rock rising above the Ethiopian highlands.