This Park inhabits Mount Longonot which is a strato-volcano located in the southeast of Lake Naivasha in the Great Rift Valley of Kenya.
Mountain Longonot’s name was derived from the Masai word called Oloonong’ot which means ‘’mountains of many spurs’’ or ‘’steep ridges’’ and is thought to have last erupted in the 1860s.
Mount Longonot is protected by Kenya Wildlife Service as part of Mount Longonot National Park. A 3.1 kilometers trail runs from the park entrance up to the crater rim and then continues in a 7.2 kilometers loop encircling the crater.
The whole tour (gate-around the rim-gate) of 13.5 km takes about 4–5 hours allowing for necessary rest breaks and parts of the trail are heavily eroded and very steep.
The gate elevation is around 2150 meters and the peak at 2780 meters but following the jagged rim involves substantially more than the 630 meters vertical difference.
Mountain Longonot is situated 60 kilometers Northwest of Nairobi and may be reached from there by a tarmac road and the nearby town is also called Longonot plus the Longonot satellite earth station which is located south of the mountain.
Mountain Longonot is a strato-volcano which comprises of a large 8X12 kilometer caldera formed by vast eruptions of trachytic lava some 21,000 years ago.
The current summit cone was developed within the earlier caldera of which this cone itself is capped by a 1.8 Kilometer crater. A forest of small trees covers the crater floor and small steam vents are found spaced around the walls of the crater.
The Longonot Mountain inhabits a variety of wildlife species such as; the plains zebras, giraffes, Thomson’s gazelles, buffaloes and hartebeests. African leopards can also be viewed in the Park though are rarely spotted.
The Mountain has several parasitic cones and effusive lava eruptions occur on the flanks and within the caldera floor.
Periodic geodetic activity recorded at Longonot in 2004–2006 demonstrated the presence of active magmatic systems beneath this volcano and on March 21st 2009, Brush Fires burned up the side of the mountain and descended into the crater thus trapping wildlife and feeding on drought ravaged brush.
Best accommodations near the mountain include; Mountain Longonot lodge, Sawela lodge, Hexagon farm lodge, Soboti hotel, Lake Naivasha country club and many others.
