Qualla: Lion Mountains https://qualla.com/lion-mountains en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:09 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/e/9/q/x/lion-mountains-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Lion Mountains https://qualla.com/lion-mountains Lion Mountains: Introduction https://qualla.com/lion-mountains/ Photo credit Erik Cleves Kristensen, CC BY 2.0. An entire country is named after this ridge of green hills, and almost no one who says the name knows it. Sierra Leone means "Lion Mountains" - and the lions in question are these, a 30-kilometer wall of forested peaks rising straight out of the Atlantic just southeast of Freetown. In 1462, a Portuguese navigator looked up at them from the deck of his ship, heard something in their shape or their storms that reminded him of a great cat, and wrote down a name that stuck to the whole coast, then the colony, then the republic.

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Image: Erik Cleves Kristensen | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/9/q/x/lion-mountains-wp/e9qx-lion-mountains-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Lion Mountains: The Name That Became a Nation https://qualla.com/lion-mountains/ Photo credit Erik Cleves Kristensen, CC BY 2.0. The navigator was Pedro de Sintra, charting West Africa for the Portuguese crown when he reached this harbor. He called the range Serra Lyoa, the Lion Mountains. Why a lion? The accounts disagree - some say the jagged coastal hills looked like a lion's teeth, others that the thun...

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Image: Erik Cleves Kristensen | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/9/q/x/lion-mountains-wp/e9qx-lion-mountains-the-name-that-became-a-nation.mp3 0:06 2 full Lion Mountains: An Island of Mountains https://qualla.com/lion-mountains/ Photo credit Erik Cleves Kristensen, CC BY 2.0. What makes the Lion Mountains so striking is how alone they stand. They rise on the Freetown Peninsula, ringed by the sea on three sides and flat lowland on the fourth. There is no foothill to ease you into them and no neighboring range to share the horizon. The nearest mountains...

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Image: Erik Cleves Kristensen | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/9/q/x/lion-mountains-wp/e9qx-lion-mountains-an-island-of-mountains.mp3 0:06 3 full Lion Mountains: Green to the Summit https://qualla.com/lion-mountains/ Photo credit Erik Cleves Kristensen, CC BY 2.0. The highest point is Picket Hill, at 888 meters, and the slopes around it are cloaked in rainforest rather than bare rock. Since 1916 the range has fallen within the Western Area Forest Reserve, a protected zone with a longstanding hunting ban that has helped keep the canopy inta...

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Image: Erik Cleves Kristensen | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/9/q/x/lion-mountains-wp/e9qx-lion-mountains-green-to-the-summit.mp3 0:06 4 full Lion Mountains: Above Freetown https://qualla.com/lion-mountains/ Photo credit Erik Cleves Kristensen, CC BY 2.0. Today the Lion Mountains shelter Freetown the way they have sheltered every settlement here for centuries, their flanks holding villages, footpaths, and the chimpanzee-rich forest of the Western Area Peninsula National Park. From the water, they still do what they did for de Sint...

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Image: Erik Cleves Kristensen | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/9/q/x/lion-mountains-wp/e9qx-lion-mountains-above-freetown.mp3 0:06 5 full