Spine of the World

The Spine of the World mountain range stretches from the westernmost part of Faerûn south of Icewind Dale to the eastern edge of the Coldwood where they join up with the Ice Mountains that stretch all the way to the Anauroch. This makes it the longest mountain range (though not the biggest) in Faerûn, thus earning its name.

Folks all across the lands of the Savage Frontier and the Silver Marches, but especially those in Scornubel refer to the Spine as 'the Wall', typically because it is simply an endless, nearly impassable range of high, jagged, perpetually ice-covered mountains...but also because on the winter days when the white snow covered faces of the peaks meet the iron-grey of the sunless winter sky, it seems to hold up the very sky.

While the western-most edge of the Spine is penetrated by a circtuitious, always dangerous trade route to the Icewind Dale, the rest of the range isn't even approached by those without a stout heart. Those creatures that do inhabit the Spine are not spoken of in polite company, and their propensity to raid the lands below keeps the conifer-cloaked, stag-roamed rolling foothill relatively uninhabited (as though the Savage Frontier and the SIlver Marches were packed) - but it should come as no surprise that several fierce barbarian tribes inhabit these lands, travelling between Summer and Winter camps.

Those that do attempt the mountains that make up the Spine and it's sister range, the Ice Mountains, seldom fly (fearing drakes of all kinds, griffons, and other less-than-friendly animals) or walk on the surface (with giant tribes, yeti, and worse) - no, they take the road that some would say worse - the ancient and forgotten byways of the sunless realm of the lost and abandoned dwarfholds. Great mines undoubted lie beneath; along with tribes of foul denizens like orcs, hobgoblins, giants, trolls, and worse, all without number.

References: Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting