Kilimanjaro, in its own contour lines.

What the print holds

Kilimanjaro on paper

Kilimanjaro is three volcanoes — Shira, Mawenzi and Kibo — and the default frame, twenty kilometres across, holds the highest of them, with Kibo's summit in the middle of the sheet. Like Fuji it was built by eruptions rather than carved out of older rock, so the rings are broad and round; but Kibo is older, and its flanks are scored by long valleys, which the print draws as the contours bending into Vs down every side of the dome.

At the top the rings close into the crater: a wide, nearly round summit plateau about two and a half kilometres across, with the rim standing a little above its floor. Uhuru Peak, the highest point, is on the southern rim, and that is where the summit mark and the height sit. West of the crater the lines crowd down the steep ground of the Western Breach, and south-west of it down the wall above the Great Barranco; to the east, the slope runs out more gently onto the high saddle that joins Kibo to Mawenzi.

Here the lines are a hundred metres apart, with a heavy one every five hundred. From the lowest ground on the sheet to the rim is more than four thousand metres of height, so the dome is drawn with more than forty lines, which is why it reads so plainly as one enormous mountain rather than a range.

Mawenzi itself stands just beyond the eastern edge of the default frame, and Shira's old plateau lies further out to the west. Widen the frame and each comes onto the sheet in turn, until all three volcanoes share it.