Well... Its very,
very common to see people come and go here, at Ryandors boards, new people come ask the same old most comon questions, as if they were the first person to ever post here... But you get that on any forum for that matter.
At any rate, I can definetly relate to anyone out there that has put time into thier map, I have almost one full year into mine now. My wife as well, has been building for our map for a year. She was building stuff out in Green acres of OSI map while I was struggeling with map making.
Yes, mountains are very hard to make.. (and thanks for the complement) Yet, once you get your own tecnique, you can whip out mountains in no time. If I had to remake every mountain on my map right now, I would estimate the time to take about 8-12 hours, to finished. (cave/dungeon entrances included, with WF).
So in short, all you need is the desire, and the rest.. well, is patience.
My shard is running full time now, on UO Gateway, and growing very fast. Im sure you can make a good map as well, maybe better than mine

if you really are serious in completing it.
One tip though.. you cant really make a supirior map, if you are useing the default Dragon scripts throughout the entire process
