Mount Roraima in 3D: The Island in the Sky

A table of ancient sandstone standing above the rainforest of South America, with sheer walls on every side and a summit that has evolved almost in isolation. Here is how to explore Mount Roraima in 3D from your iPhone.

Mount Roraima rises out of the Gran Sabana in southern Venezuela as a single block, flat on top and vertical on every side. It is the highest of the tepuis, the table mountains of the Guiana Highlands, and its summit plateau sits at around 2,810 metres with cliffs of several hundred metres running the full way round.

Its northern corner is a triple point: Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana all meet on the summit, marked by a concrete pillar that is one of the strangest border monuments anywhere.

The rock is old in a way that is hard to hold in your head — Precambrian sandstone laid down long before anything with a backbone existed. You can explore Mount Roraima today, in full 3D with live Street View, right from your phone.

What makes Roraima special

Tepuis are erosional remnants. A vast sheet of sandstone once covered this region, and over an immense span of time rivers and weather stripped almost all of it away, leaving isolated blocks where the rock happened to be hardest. What survives stands with near-vertical sides because sandstone fails by breaking off in slabs rather than wearing down into slopes.

The consequence is biological. Each summit has been cut off from the ground below and from every other summit for a very long time, and the plateau surface is nutrient-poor, wet, and swept by cloud. Species up there have gone their own way. Carnivorous plants are common, because catching insects is an easier way to get nitrogen than extracting it from bare rock. The small black pebble toad, endemic to Roraima and its neighbours, escapes predators by curling up and rolling down a slope rather than hopping.

The summit itself is not the green plateau people expect. It is largely bare rock, sculpted into pillars, basins and channels, with pools of dark water and patches of vegetation in the hollows. Cloud sits on it most of the time.

How to explore Roraima in 3D

This is where MAPAS comes in. There is very little ground-level imagery in this part of the Gran Sabana, so the terrain view is the tour — and for a landform this dramatic, that is the right tool.

For a first run, try this order:

1. Search for Mount Roraima and switch to 3D so the tepui lifts clear of the savanna as a single flat-topped block.
2. Orbit it at mid-height, below the rim, to see how continuous the cliff line is and how few breaks there are in it.
3. Find the ramp on the southern side — the one natural break where a debris slope reaches the summit — because that is the only walking route up.
4. Rise over the rim and look across the plateau to see how broken and rocky the top actually is.
5. Move to the northern corner, where the three borders meet, and look down into Guyana and Brazil.
6. Pull back to take in Kukenán, the neighbouring tepui, and the savanna route in from Paraitepui.

Beyond the summit plateau

• The Prow — the sharp northern point of the massif, where two cliff faces meet in an edge like a ship’s bow.
• The Ramp — the sloping ledge on the southern wall that carries the only non-technical route to the top.
• The triple point — the marker where Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana meet, on the summit’s northern end.
• Kukenán tepui — Roraima’s neighbour, with a long seasonal waterfall dropping from its rim.
• Paraitepui — the last village on the approach, and the start of the walk in across open savanna.

Why the walls are vertical

Seen flat, Roraima is a shape on a map. Tilted in 3D, the mechanics are obvious.

The plateau is capped by hard, well-cemented quartz sandstone lying almost perfectly horizontal. Beneath it sit softer layers. Water works into vertical joints in the caprock, undercuts the weaker rock below, and eventually a slab loses support and falls away as a block. The face stays vertical because that is how the rock fails — there is no gradual crumbling to soften it into a hillside.

That is also why the tepuis stand apart rather than forming a ridge. They are not peaks pushed up; they are the last remaining fragments of a surface that used to be continuous, and the gaps between them are where the sandstone has already gone. Seeing Roraima and Kukenán together, with flat savanna between them at the same low level, makes the point better than any diagram: the interesting thing is not that the mountains are there, it is that everything around them has been removed.

Before you go

Access is normally from Santa Elena de Uairén in Venezuela, via Paraitepui, with a licensed operator handling permits, guides and porters. The route is a walk rather than a climb, but it is long, wet and remote, with no evacuation options that do not take days.

The drier months are generally more comfortable, though “drier” is relative on a mountain that makes its own weather. Pack for rain, cold nights and constant damp. Everything brought up must come down again, including waste, and camping is restricted to designated spots under the overhangs on the summit.

Common questions

Is Roraima the mountain from *The Lost World*?

It is widely credited as the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel, which imagined a plateau cut off long enough for prehistoric life to survive. The isolation is real; the dinosaurs are not.

Do you need climbing experience?

No. The standard route up the ramp is a hard walk with exposure rather than a climb. Fitness and tolerance for six days of wet camping matter far more than technical skill.

Is MAPAS free to use?

Yes. It is free on the App Store, needs no sign-up before you start exploring, and works on iPhone and iPad.

No six-day trek, no permits, no week of rain. Just a block of very old sandstone standing above the savanna with three countries meeting on top of it, laid out in three dimensions.

Open MAPAS and circle Mount Roraima from the savanna to the summit.