Yushan , "Jade Mountain", also Mount Yu is the highest mountain in Taiwan and the fourth highest mountain on an island. The name of Mount Morrison is thought to have been named in honor of the 19th century missionary Robert Morrison. Today, the mountain is referred to as Yushan or Jade Mountain.
The island of Taiwan is situated at the intersection of two tectonic plates – the Eurasian Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate. Even as “recently” as the late Paleozoic (some 250 million years ago), the land here was still but a sedimentary seabed layered with silt and sand. As the two plates began pressing against each other, the land buckled, bent, and created the landscape – 165 mountains higher than 3,000 m (9,800 ft) above sea level on a small island (38th in the world).
Yushan is also notable in containing the highest point on the Tropic of Cancer and the only point on that circle of latitude where there is any evidence of Quaternary glaciation. As recently as seventeen thousand years ago, permanent ice caps existed throughout Taiwan’s highest mountains and extended owing to the wet climate down to 2,800 metres (9,190 ft); whereas currently the nearest glaciers to the Tropic of Cancer are in Mexico on the Iztaccíhuatl volcano.
Source: Wikipedia
Thanks to Emily via postcrossing for this piece of Jade Mountain!
Sent: 11 August 2015 Received: 21 August 2015 Travelled: 10 days
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