Ervis Gorge

The Ervis Gorge is a miles-wide canyon on Minerva. It marks the boundary between the territories of the great clans Omalo to the east and Skarmer to the west. Every summer it floods with melting ice and becomes a large river, then drains again in the winter.

In 1984, Fralk led a military expedition across the Gorge into Reatur's domain, the first cross-gorge invasion in known Minervan history. That same year, the American space shuttle Athena landed east of the gorge, while the Soviet shuttle Tsiolovsky landed west of it. (The Viking space probe had landed east of the gorge, but the US government had claimed in had landed fifty miles to the west on the gorge's other side in an attempt to gain an advantage when the two superpowers launched an expedition.)

Among humans, the gorge is known as the Jotun Canyon.