Yage Taung (Burmese: ရိဒ်တောင်) is a peak of the Tenasserim Hills, Burma.[3] This mountain rises within the Tanintharyi National Park which is coterminous with the Kaeng Krachan National Park zone over the border with Thailand.[4]
Geography
Yage Taung is located in a wooded and largely uninhabited area of the Tanintharyi Region, 1.4 km to the west of the border with Thailand. The closest conspicuous peaks are 1,431 m high Palan Taung rising less than 6 km to the NNW and 1,315 m high Yekye Tong to the SSE, also by the Thai border.[2]
The nearest inhabited place on the Burmese side is Natthi, a riverside village located 26 km to the WSW.[3]
History
On 19 July 2011, a Royal Thai Army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crashed in the Yage Taung mountainside, killing 9. The chopper had been sent out to recover five bodies of victims of another helicopter crash involving a Bell UH-1 Iroquois that had occurred two days earlier while looking for illegal loggers in Kaeng Krachan National Park near the Burmese border west of Phetchaburi.[5]
A third helicopter, a Bell 212, also crashed in the same area on Sunday, 25 July a few miles further east close to the Kaeng Krachan Reservoir.[6] Superstitious people blamed the three consecutive helicopter crashes on the belief that the densely forested mountains of the Tenasserim Range have strong guardian spirits according to Thai folklore.[7]
