Mountains of the Moon: The Duke of the Abruzzi and the 1906 Ruwenzori Conquest

The Fabled Source of the Nile

In antiquity, Ptolemy described a legendary mountain range deep in equatorial Africa whose snows fed the sources of the Nile: the Lunae Montes, or Mountains of the Moon. For nearly two millennia, geographers debated whether these glaciated mountains truly existed. Even when Henry Morton Stanley glimpsed their glittering peaks through parting storm clouds in 1888, the Rwenzori range remained an untamed labyrinth.

Unlike the volcanic cones of Kilimanjaro and Kenya, the Rwenzori is a non-volcanic fault-block horst of ancient metamorphic rock, permanently swathed in dense equatorial mist, torrential downpours, and impassable bogs.

In 1906, Prince Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi, fresh from his conquest of Mount Saint Elias and Arctic exploration, organized a royal Italian expedition to map and climb the entire Rwenzori range.

“We moved through a prehistoric world where giant tree groundsels reached twenty feet into the fog and moss hung like emerald draperies from every branch.” — Filippo De Filippi, Expedition Chronicler, 1906

Petigax and the Courmayeur Elite

The Duke did not leave success to chance. He assembled an elite team from Courmayeur: lead guide Giuseppe ‘Joseph’ Petigax, along with guides César Ollier and Josef Brocherel, expedition physician and chronicler Filippo De Filippi, and the master mountain photographer Vittorio Sella.

Ascending the Mobuku and Bujuku valleys from Uganda, the team spent weeks navigating knee-deep mud bogs and perpetual freezing drizzle. Carrying heavy wooden view cameras and glass plates, Vittorio Sella captured the first authentic photographs of the range’s surreal Afro-alpine flora and hanging glaciers.

The Conquest of Margherita Peak

On June 18, 1906, the Duke, Petigax, Ollier, and Brocherel departed from their high camp on the rock rib below the Elena Glacier. Roped together in dense fog, Petigax led the way across the heavily crevassed ice of the Stanley Plateau.

Reaching the base of the final glaciated dome of Mount Stanley, Petigax cut steps up a 45-degree slope of hard firn on the Margherita Glacier. Scaling a final knife-edge corniced ridge in howling wind, the Duke and Petigax pulled onto the virgin summit rocks at 5,109 metres.

The Duke unfurled the Italian tricolor and named the summit Margherita Peak, in honor of Italy’s Queen Margherita. They then traversed the ridge to conquer its sister peak, Alexandra Peak (5,091 m). Over the ensuing weeks, the expedition methodically summitted all sixteen major glaciated peaks in the Rwenzori, solving the ancient geographical riddle of the Nile’s sources and establishing one of the most flawless scientific expedition records in mountaineering history.