Semen Mountains National Park

Semen Mountains National Park
In some places the more recent rocks have been eroded by rain, with the result that the original rocks have been exposed. Nowhere is this more prominent or stunning – than in Ethiopia’s northern Simien region. This was the epicentre of much volcanic activity about forty million years ago, and the resulting outpouring of a boiling mass of white-hot basaltic lava reached a thickness of some 3,000 metres (9,840 feet) in this area before it stopped.


Subsequent erosion of this volcanic sheet has produced the dramatic highs and lows of the Simiens: deep precipices and gorges, tall pinnacles of jagged rock, and weird, broken landscapes.


The plateau basalts produced by this vast spreading thickness of lava have been responsible for the building up of great tablelands in the centre and north-west of the country and in the eastern highlands
between Harar and Sidamo, which are now considerably eroded.