Ghyll:Mount Yurch

General information and history

Located 1200 lele west of Iganefta, Mount Yurch is the ultimate Ghyllian challenge to mountaineers. For centuries, it defined climbers, claiming dozens of lives, including that of the (at the time) famous sage, Momfrex "Chinchilla" Resgrew. It was first successfully scaled in -98 EC by Izzimae Grommie, sister of Daffid Grommie. Izzimae later rose to the position of Supreme Omigod of the Order of Truth, largely on the publicity of her book "Lurch up Yurch."

Mount Yurch is 18,764 nanits tall, making it about 4,000 taller than Mount Rotyg which is the second tallest mountain in Ghyll. However, it's not so much its height that makes it such a challenge, as the terrain, weather, and wildlife.

Mountaineering information

There are two possible approaches to Mount Yurch, for those desiring to reach at least half way up.

The eastern approach can be seen by anyone arriving from Iganefta, and appears, from the base, to be the easier of the two. This is very misleading, and has led to more than one climbing party vanishing into the crevasses without a trace. It starts as a gentle climb, and gradually steepens as it rises above the treeline, until one is compelled to cut steps into the face at many points. Over the generations, sufficiently many such stairs have been cut, however, that now less-experienced climbers have an advantage over even the most skilled climbers of earlier years.

The second approach, from the south, is a much easier climb. The winding gentle path makes the total climb about 4 times as long as the eastern approach. And, more importantly, the wild animals encountered along the way make this approach at least as dangerous as scaling a sheer cliff in freezing winds.

While there have been numerous reports of encountering aelphants on the southern approach, no evidence of this has yet been produced. More commonly reported are encounters with Tuckarandos, many of which will gleefully eat your ankles at the slightest provocation. Such as walking through their territory, for example.

Economic significance and amusing anecdotes

Of particular importance to the tourist trade of Iganefta is the company "Mount Yurch Climbers", which advertises aggressively throughout the country, and brings thousands of tourists to Iganefta every month, presumably to climb the mountain. Barely one in a hundred actually makes it out to the mountain, and barely one in a thousand actually makes it to the top. But most of these visitors stay several days in Iganefta, buy millions of trinkets, and souvenier shirts that imply that they climbed the mountain.

So many Ghyllians have made this trek, and so few have actually made it to the top, that it is considered particularly bad taste, on seeing one of these shirts, to ask if the wearer actually climbed the mountain. Most recently this led to the popular shirt line with the caption "Mount Yurch: I won't ask if you don't", and the vitriolic debate on the floor of the Parliament about which members of Parliament had, in fact, climbed Mount Yurch, and which ones had just bought shirts claiming that they had done so. It is generally assumed that none of them climbed the mountain, but few people will state this publically.

Residents of Iganefta, on the other hand, don't go in for climbing what they refer to as "The Grim Mr. Yurch," and look with the greatest scorn on the people that flock to Iganefta intent on killing themselves on the slopes. They've seen their share of disasters, not least of which was the death of 27 climbers in -2 EC, when a rope froze and snapped, sending a dozen climbers plummeting down the slope, falling into the midst of another party of climbers, sending the whole lot of them over a cliff. And, of course, nearly ever week, someone comes down from the southern climb with severe Tuckarando bites, usually resulting in an average of 14 deaths per year due to infection and other complications.

The Mount Yurch Rescue Society has a gift shop at the base of the eastern climb, where they sell trinkets and attempt to talk would-be climbers out of risking their life by showing grisly documentaries of previous incidents. They also do a roaring trade in "I might have climbed Mount Yurch" shirts.

Geological facts

Mount Yurch is thought to have grown up rather rapidly, over the period of perhaps as little as 2000 years, during the time of the Avazian civilization. This is largely conjecture, but is based, at least somewhat, on fossil evidence and myths of a cataclysmic earthquake vaguely in that period. What is more clear is that the mountain is the result of a fearsome tectonic event. The sheer eastern face of the mountain appears to have once been a horizontal rock layer.

References: Momfrex Resgrew, Parliament, Iganefta

--DrBacchus 09:41, 26 Dec 2004 (EST)