Sorry about the week of delay - I was away learning new things for a different kind of work.
There is a single recorded incident of a high mountain village in the Quivin Hills (err, mountains... whatever) - the hidden clan of the Karandoli during their revenge against the Jenstali. And I am pretty certain that they occupied a "hidden valley", aka a short world or extension of the hero planes.
Jane wanted to call on my "expertise" - sorry to disappoint.
I'm a lowlander from northern Germany, where we apply the name "berg" even to above-average drumlins and morraines. Ok, my grandfather was from Austria and used to climb what he referred to as "real mountains", starting at 10000 feet, but I never met him.
Geologically, I think that the chalk alps (like Zugspitze or Dolomites) are the wrong parallel for Sartar. Soft, chalky rock would have been ground down to nicely rounded forms (just as Snowdonia) in this cradle of storms.
What we get instead is some basal or metamorph rock pushed up by tectonic and/or volcanic activity, getting craggy in the process, then whittled down.
Or carved out - one of my favourite comparisons are the Lyngsalpane
(Lyngen Alps) near Tromso:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyngen_Alps
Keep in mind that the fjords on both sides add another 800 m to their
heights.
Different types of rock have different weathering patterns, and tend to result in different mountain shapes.
Storm Mountains: Some volcanic, some basal rock, the tallest peak being Stormwalk Mountain. A tectonic consequence of the Footprint, according to one myth of origin, or a wall built to separate the realms of little brother and the bull. Sons of Vestkarthen, the tallest one of them beheaded.
Somehow chalky rock and Vestkarthen (of the Deep, remember) doesn't work for me.
Quivins: similar situation.
Rockwoods: guesses are off - a forest (or hedge) of mountain peaks sowed by Larnste. Kero Fin is of the same stock.
Skyreach: No idea about their origin. Arrowmound features only later.
The "hills" of Sartar probably are some of the same as the mountains (the ridges, for instance) and else chalky rock or sandstone, sediments either of the long time earth spent under water before being born (think of a huge, cubic pearl) or of one of several inundations (where rivers flowing uphill will have caused strange sedimentation patterns, btw).
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