Mountains Solomon Islands

At 1,500 meters, the temperature drops by six degrees. You stop on the muddy trail to pull on a long-sleeve shirt. The vegetation has changed—the tall lowland trees of the morning are gone; now you are inside cloud forest, every trunk and branch and rock plastered in living moss the color of fresh-cut grass. A Kolombangara White-Eye, a small bird that exists only above 700 meters on this one island, calls from somewhere ahead. The cloud parts for a second and you see, far below and to the south, the broken green ring of the crater rim itself, the inside of an extinct volcano with the largest forest-floor inside any caldera in the Pacific.

The Solomon Islands has the highest mountains in the insular South Pacific outside Papua New Guinea. Mt Popomanaseu on Guadalcanal rises to 2,335 meters; Mt Veve on Kolombangara to 1,779; Mt Maetambe on Choiseul to 1,067. The country is essentially a chain of submerged volcanoes that emerged 15 million years ago and was sculpted into its current rainforest-clad geography by 15 million years of rain. The interior of every major island is mountainous; even ‘flat’ islands like Santa Isabel have ridges climbing to over a thousand meters.

For trekking visitors, the country’s standout mountain destination is Kolombangara—a near-perfect circular extinct volcano in the Western Province with a six-kilometer-wide crater, the only mountain in the country with a dedicated visitor lodge at altitude, and the South Pacific’s most organized network of marked rainforest trails. Mt Popomanaseu on Guadalcanal is a more committing expedition reached by 2–3 day porter-supported treks from Nanala village. Santa Isabel’s and Choiseul’s mountains see almost no foreign visitors at all and are largely the domain of local hunters. The dry season (June to September, peak July and August) is the standard window for any serious mountain trip; the rainy months bring landslides on the steeper trails and impassable river crossings.

Kolombangara—the perfect volcano

Kolombangara Island sits 30 minutes by boat north of Gizo in the Western Province. From the air the island looks like a textbook drawing of a volcano: an almost perfectly circular ring of mountains around a flat-floored crater six kilometers across, the rim breached on the eastern side by the Vila River as it cuts its way to the sea. The island is roughly 30 kilometers in diameter at sea level; its highest point, Mt Veve, reaches 1,779 meters.

The entire upper third of the island is managed by KIBCA, the Kolombangara Island Biodiversity Conservation Association, a community-based organization that protects the rainforest above 400 meters and runs Imbu Rano Lodge, the country’s only purpose-built mountain accommodation. The conservation area was created after the island’s lowland forests were heavily logged in the 1960s and 70s; today the upper rainforest is one of the most intact tracts of montane forest in the South Pacific.

The lodge at Imbu Rano sits at 400 meters elevation on the main ridge, with sweeping views down into the crater and out across the lagoons of New Georgia Sound. Six basic rooms; a self-catering kitchen; a deep verandah for late-afternoon rest after the day’s walk. Most visitors stay at Imbu Rano for 2 to 5 nights and use it as the base for day walks and the longer summit treks.

The track network around the lodge is unusually well-developed for the Solomons. Easy 1-hour walks descend to the Vila River swimming pools or climb the ridge to a giant-tree grove and a landslide lookout. Half-day walks reach the Patu Kolo Stone, a carved stone that resembles the profile of the crater rim, considered tambu (sacred) by the Nduke-speaking people of Kolombangara. Day-long walks loop along the Vila River and back up to Pig Camp. All walks require a local guide, which KIBCA arranges from Ringgi.

Mt Veve and the crater rim—the country’s great trek

The signature multi-day walk on Kolombangara is the climb from Imbu Rano Lodge to Mt Veve (1,779 m) on the crater rim. It is, by general agreement among visiting trekkers, the best maintained and most rewarding mountain walk in the entire country.

The route starts at 400 meters at the lodge and climbs through a sequence of forest zones—hill rainforest, montane rainforest, and finally moss-covered cloud forest above 1,400 meters—before reaching the crater rim at Mt Tepalamenggutu (1,708 m, the second-highest peak) on day one. Three basic walking camps with water are spaced along the route. From the rim it is another half-day push along the cleared trail through mossy forest to the summit of Mt Veve itself.

Most parties allow 2 to 4 days for the return walk depending on fitness and weather. The track is cut and maintained by KIBCA rangers but is steep, slippery in wet weather, and challenging—trekking poles, broken-in boots with good grip, and a head torch are all essentials. Cloud is constant near the summit; clear views happen perhaps one morning in three.

For trekkers with less time, a shorter overnight walk reaches the crater rim at Mt Tepalamenggutu and returns the next day, skipping Mt Veve itself. Even this shorter route requires reasonable fitness and a guide; a porter is recommended for the longer summit climb to carry camp gear and food up the steeper sections.

Other mountains—Popomanaseu, Maetambe, and the Santa Isabel ridges

Mt Popomanaseu (2,335 m), on the central spine of Guadalcanal, is the highest mountain in the insular South Pacific outside New Guinea. The climb is a serious 2- to 3-day expedition that starts at the old Gold Ridge Mine 25 kilometers east of Honiara, follows the cross-island foot highway to Nanala village (where a kastom gift is presented to the chief), and then climbs through dense jungle, river crossings, and a final scramble through near-vertical valley walls of moss and roots to the cloud-forest summit. There is no organized infrastructure on the route—trekkers arrange the climb directly through Honiara tour operators and local villages. The cloud at the summit is almost permanent; a clear morning of the full island view is rare and memorable.

Choiseul (locally called Lauru) is the country’s least-visited large island. Its central spine rises to Mt Maetambe at 1,067 meters, an extinct volcano covered in some of the best-preserved limestone-karst rainforest in the Solomons. The area is recognized as a Key Biodiversity Area and supports endemic frogs, butterflies, and the endangered Poncelet’s Giant Rat. Visiting requires real planning—air links to Choiseul are infrequent, accommodation is limited to small village guesthouses, and the trails are local hunters’ tracks rather than tourist routes.

The Santa Isabel mountain ridge runs the length of the island and rises to over 1,200 meters. Most visitor walking in Santa Isabel is along the lowland ridges around Suavanao and Papatura, where rainforest tracks and waterfall hikes can be done as half-day trips from the lodges. Papatura Island Retreat sits in front of a 180-degree view across to the Santa Isabel range and runs guided rainforest walks from the property; the high ridges further inland are uncharted for foreign trekkers.

Closer to Honiara, the Mt Austen and Skyline Ridge back-country provides a 1-day walking circuit through WWII sites and the upper Mataniko river valley. The Mataniko Falls hike climbs the Galloping Horse Hills (the same ridge featured in Terrence Malick’s film The Thin Red Line) to a waterfall on the river; the trail is steep but accessible as a guided day trip from Honiara.

Volcanoes you can climb in a day—Savo and the active rim

Not every Solomons mountain trip needs 2,000 meters of ascent. Savo Island, a small extinct-but-thermally-active volcano sitting 30 kilometers north-west of Honiara across the Iron Bottom Sound, offers one of the most accessible mountain day-trips in the country.

Savo’s cone rises 510 meters from sea level and last erupted in the late 19th century. The thermal activity that remains feeds hot springs along the coast and warms the volcanic sand beaches; megapode birds use the warm sand and the thermal heat from the soil itself to incubate their eggs, which they bury and abandon in shared communal nesting sites. A day trip from Honiara typically includes a guided 1- to 2-hour walk to the volcano crater (or a shorter ridge walk for less-fit visitors), a visit to the hot springs, a megapode nesting site walk, lunch at Sunset Lodge, and a dolphin-watching boat ride in the channel on the way back.

Travel Solomons runs the Savo Island Day Tour as a standard product; departure is from Honiara’s Vila Village by 30-minute motorized canoe across the channel. The trip is one of the country’s few easy mountain options for casual hikers; it can be done by anyone with reasonable knee health and a willingness to handle a small open boat in the morning chop.

For overnighting on Savo itself, Savo Sunset Lodge offers basic en-suite rooms in a family-run setup just up the hill from the boat landing. The lodge is the base for the volcano hike, the hot springs, and the megapode walks; transport from Honiara is by banana boat for a small fee. The trip is one of the few in the country that doesn’t need to be planned weeks ahead.

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