UKH

What does it mean to know a mountain? Norman Hadley tentatively asks whether we can be a bit over-focused on reaching the top as directly as possible, to the detriment of a deeper appreciation.

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Love the spirit behind this article.

Some of the best times in the mountains are finding a lonely fell and just sitting down awhile and taking it all in. There's no rush.

As a crowd hater I realised early on in life that summits were often full of what I don't go to the hills for - people! Obviously, as a hill walker you'd want to visit on some occasions. When I was Munro bagging we'd often use the SMC book for ideas but then explore the map for other ways to camp and traverse the summits. The OS map was (and remains) a constant source of ideas for places to explore - often just seeing an unusual name will spark an idea for a walk. I've been on popular fells where a visit to the top just didn't appeal that day so we contoured around the mountain at a fairly consistent height exploring outcrops or little tarns and saw no-one else.

Having started my hill walking most weekends on Kinder Scout, the summit was rarely the focus.  But it was an interesting exercise to locate it (approx), in the days before GPS and altimeters were common.

It’s also a good way of exploring the alps. Don’t go for the summits but traverse the cols and faces and hanging valleys and glaciers below, using bivouac huts for the nights.  

Thanks ah. I've always liked the observation that we're human beings not human doings.

In an achievement-obsessed culture, it becomes an increasingly radical act to just sit and stare.

Thanks Lankyman. Yes, the issue seems even more acute in Scotland, where a Munro peak is often so remote as to leave only one practicable route as an out and back in a day. So everyone concentrates on exactly the same metre-wide strip of land from the tarmac to the cairn, and the corries go untrodden from one decade to the next. I love going off-piste and discovering some hidden glen unmentioned by the guidebooks. 

Yup, BN. Growing up in Lincolnshire, a significant portion of my misspent youth was misspent stumbling up and down mist-clad peat-hags being spattered by the upward-flying misnomer that is the Downfall, trying to find Kinder's summit. But there's a lot to be discovered on the crinkly edges of the plateau. 

Thoroughly enjoyed this article Norman.

I wonder if there’s a bit of a split though.  I’ve had conversations with people who seemed bemused that anyone would carry on in the hills after completing the munros as if that was the end in itself.  Those people maybe have a different mindset from some of us who enjoy the experiences we have, rather than any sort of achievement.

there are also quite a few people who are quite terrified of deviating from paths or routes because they’re not all that confident out with following their  blue dot on a trail.  I think with some confidence these people would be a little more likely to relax into the environment and spirit of exploration but I acknowledge I was privileged to be in the scouts and have a dad who forced much map reading and compass work on me, despite protestations in my teenage years! 

One of my most enjoyable days on a hill in Scotland was spent exploring the corries east of Ben More Assynt.  Splendid flora, with remarkable amounts of sundew.  I never went near the summit, or even the ridge, and didn't feel I'd missed anything.

That was nigh on forty years ago, and the last time I was up Glen Cassley I think the estate had barred access from the glen.  

T.

Happily, no. Not the case.

Although the SMC routes initially, and more recently the popular site for GPS route downloads does mean that bigger hills often have one single heavily used route.

Only the minority have a single practicable route, there's generally a few ways for most. The existence of heavily used "Red Routes" does keep the alternatives quiet.

Here's a theory. The fixation on summiting a mountain may be due in part to a tick-box mindset and a culture blinkered towards quantifiable achievement and lacking imagination, but it is also something more innate: story.

The summit occupies a central role in a narrative arc that satisfies our desire for purpose and direction. It frames the experience within a shape that naturally appeals to us. It's not the only story available, clearly, but it's a winning formula.

While I can see it might appear that only Munro baggers routes get trodden, particularly if you only episodically visit from South of the border, in actuality there are a lot of walkers doing outings less travelled. But in proportion their numbers are low and by default you are less likely to cross paths with them.

Though to some degree I agree, Hill walking seams to have changed as numbers exponentially increased, from self reliance to often dependancy, and specific summit focused. A huge number of people now seam to be in need of a GPS & GPX track to follow, or for psychological security. People needing to know if they can camp at spot x, or asking if even basic slopes are walkable if they are ‘off route’.  
Often if you approach a Munro summit from an odd direction, or if you are asked where you have been and it’s not a bagging itinerary you get a blank look.

And such frequent comments that make that assumption - "are you doing the other one as well?" or whatever.

Do the Munros in winter and you'll have them mostly to yourself. 

Or for some when they ask if you are doing the munros (or more commonly how many have you left) and you say nope done them…..you get a look as if to say why are you back here then!

Generally I now say I’m not doing the munros and am out for a walk.

There's a bit of a thing with Scottish hills that reasonable routes can be relatively hard to spot from the map (unlike, say, the Lakes where you can just pick one of half a dozen a dotted lines and it'll probably be a nice enough walk), so a lot of people are going to be following routes from an SMC guide or Trail magazine or whatever.

I've followed a lot of "standard bagger's routes" and it's not because I hate everything about mountains except the tick at the end of the day so I want to minimize the amount of time I spend walking, it's because for the most part they're quite enjoyable days out.

I was the giver of the blank look recently while descending past Angle Tarn - I was asked 'is it far to the top?' I was puzzled for a minute and asked 'the top of what'? 

I think they expected everyone was en-route to or from Scafell Pike

At least it keeps the quiet places quiet

Summits are also just intrinsically interesting places. You generally get more of a sense of the shape of the surrounding country the higher you get, and the summit tends to be where you actually get the full 360 degrees laid out around you, often as a nice surprise after looking at the slope in front of you for the last hour or so. The top of a tall (by local standards) hill is a particularly satisfying place to sit and contemplate life.

Yes, that's true too, though there are numerous exceptions - usually more rounded hills - where the summit is less interesting, or at least no more interesting, than other parts of the hill.

I think the Cairngorms are a great example (no surprise that Nan Shepherd's timeless insights were born there) - I love being up on the plateau and exploring the corries, but I'm indifferent to many of the summits.

Yes and no. Arguably Munros (and hills generally) that stand above main roads get busier in proper winter conditions as the glen roads become off-puttingly icy/dodgy. There was a good example of this during that cold/snowy pair of winters a dozen or so years ago: with a couple of friends I had a great Dorain/Dothaidh day from Bridge of Orchy in beautiful sunny snow-right-down conditions, and while the hills weren't absolutely heaving they were unusually busy (and pleasantly so - there was a good communal vibe up top with everyone enjoying themselves). I'm as sure as I can be that loads of people defaulted to easy access Munros that day rather than risking the minor roads. A similar thing applies to the Ochils: the busiest the main loops ever get tends to be on winter weekend days when the forecast is poor for higher things but OK at the 600m/700m level, and again there is the easy road factor given that people can park in Alva or Tillicoultry.

Interesting subject generally - nice piece, as others have said. With regard to the numerous different Wainwright routes, I've heard of at least one person who has done everything, at least up or down (not sure about up *and* down). Blencathra can be a bit of a stopper - one of the southern gill routes has a reputation for being pretty unpleasant and messy. Incidentally, Blencathra might have more Wainwright routes than Helvellyn - it's difficult to directly compare as the first two books (including Eastern, with Helvellyn) were done in a different style to the later five (including Northern, with Blencathra), as AW was evidently trying things out layout-wise before settling on his established and very successful structure. Helvellyn has 14 routes listed (seven plus seven, west/east) in a more sketchy format than Blencathra's full-blown 12, but Blencathra has 36 pages compared with Helvellyn's 26.

One thing which the writer touches on - with mention of multiple ascents of Helvellyn - is an important factor in this general debate. There's a tendency for the very linear baggers - who will only return to a hill, if at all, as part of a repeat round - to be seen as the trend-setters in terms of what folk with a bagging mentality do on the hill. That's true to an extent, but there are also loads of cumulative repeaters who pile up hefty numbers on certain hills, always diligently going to the top but arguably for different reasons than the linear completists. There are overlaps between these groups of course - I'm one such, having done a few standard rounds (Munros, Donalds, Wainwrights) but being generally more minded to build up repeat totals on local things, which feel like "home". There are more people of that kind around than tends to be realised - I know quite a few of them and there are doubtless many more. Such people generally just get on with it and don't say much - there's possibly a correlation between shyness and repeat-ascending, with an embarrassment factor being in play. One example was the late Alan Douglas with his 2800 ascents of Ben Lomond, exactly 1400 by the main path and 1400 by the Ptarmigan route. He was generally below the radar, as is his brother Ian who has racked up almost 8000 Munro ascents in total. Getting to the actual top was important for them, and for other such people, myself included, even on the 857th or whatever visit.

That might be the case for the Lawers/Lomond/winter climbing honeypots. But after a season on the winter Munros, my average was about one person every couple of weeks. It wasn't so much quiet as utterly empty. Seems there are very, very few people out there in winter.

Exactly!

If you are out on a claggy day and it only clears once, then for most of us you want it to be on the summit. I remember the day on Ciste Dubh (Easter 2008) when we slogged up in snow and spindrift and it cleared for no more than 30 seconds just when we reached the summit. There were white mountains in all directions. And then they were gone. Easter holidays, accessible Munro and we saw no one else on the hill.

IMO, there is nothing to beat the view from a mountain summit, and the "pantheistic exaltation" as a friend of mine once described it.

D'you not think that the "I'm not into the summit, I prefer the slopes" thing, would sit in a similar camp to the climber saying "I don't care about getting to the top of the route. I prefer to dog up and actually experience the individual moves." Folk assume that being interested in a summit somehow devalues the rest of it. That's not true, at least for some.

As long as I've been (deeply) impressed by mountains in a visual sense - which is essentially my whole life - asides being just amazed, the first thought is 'I wonder what's up there?'. Then taking something quantifiable (like a mountain top, or a route, or a link-up, or a list of mountains) is a great channel for motivation, at least to me - can't speak to others - to then understand that place way more deeply than you otherwise would have.

I actually side with Ramblin Dave's thing about the aesthetics of a summit and sense of position in a landscape. It doesn't really matter if it's spiky like the Cuillin, or 'less interesting' like the Cairngorms. One of them is exposure on the vertical plane. The other is on the horizontal - probably more like being on the sea, with the big skies and the exposure from being pressed against that sky.

Interesting. I was meaning more the A82/A9 Munros rather than the summer standards, given that the Rowardennan and Lednock roads can be awkward in winter (particularly on nice chilly/bright days up top, annoyingly), while the Lawers high road has long been tricky re ice and the Lix Toll garage people make a steady living off retrieving cars from ditches. Further north, eg during your own efforts, would not Fionn Bheinn from Achnasheen be much more likely to have a few people on it in February than various of the up-Affric Munros?

"Wainwright suggests fourteen different routes up Helvellyn and it is not a huge mathematical leap to the realisation that one-hundred-and-ninety-six different combinations are possible on any given day"

I think he either over or under estimates the number of possible combinations, myself.

As someone currently engaged in bagging all the Welsh Nuttalls I couldn't possibly criticise the focus on summits. But one of the best things about doing all these hills is that it's utterly meaningless. I've always liked to see what's round the corner, over the top or down in the next valley. Going over summits inevitably happens in this case.

Summits are wonderful viewpoints, but the problem is that they do indeed play a central role in that, at the summit, one is only half way home. On more serious routes, the biggest achievement of all (the only 'tick' that really matters) is getting back safely.

To be honest, my experience has been that Munros outside of the obvious honeypots tend to be fairly quiet whether in summer or winter. My guess would be that the majority of people going up hills in Scotland aren't committed Munro baggers, they're just relatively occasional hillwalkers and they understandably tend to be drawn to well-known and attractive routes. If they were all baggers then you'd expect to see about as many people on Stuc an Lochain as you do on Ben Lawers and this doesn't seem to be the case.

Perhaps, although I doubt lambs have a narrative arc and they definitely like to be standing on top of things! I suspect there is a primal enjoyment of being at the top of things.

Indeed, many of the Munro summits of the 'Gorms and the Mounth are relatively bland points on high plateaux. Those Red Route multi-Munro walks that are often described as boring by some avoid some truly spectacular coires and sights. The 4 Munro plowter east of the Glenshee ski centre that avoids decent views of Coire Kander, Caenlochan and Caness Glens being a fairly good example.

That's not my experience. Just to give one of countless examples. I did the South Cluanie Ridge in full winter conditions on a good-weather Saturday in February 2015. Not only did I see no-one else on the Ridge (although there were welcome tracks from a previous day!), but on the hitch back to the Cluanie Inn I waited 10 minutes for the first car to come past. It was the 10th car and about 30 minutes before I got a lift. 

For those of us who are humble winter walkers, rather than winter climbers, I suspect that is quite typical.

Thanks everyone for some really interesting, thoughtful responses. Keep 'em coming.

One thread that seems particularly interesting is how the Scottish scene differs from that in the Lakes. 

For example, the presence of stalkers' tracks can distort choices. When I ran and wrote up Maol Cheann-Dearg, the temptation to vary from the obvious route was minimal, because it would have entailed miles of bouldery heather-flog. https://www.ukhillwalking.com/logbook/r/index.php?i=1400

The sheer scale of the Highlands can skew things too. "Mixing it up" with different route choices is easy on Helvellyn but maybe not so much in the NW Highlands. Beinn Alligin is a fine hill I've been up three times, in snow, rain and sun. On each occasion, I followed the regular clockwise circuit of Toll à Mhadaidh Mòr from Inveralligin. It's a fantastic day out and I'll wager the vast majority of ascents follow the same path.

Beinn Alligin also looks sensational from the north, so suppose I wanted my next ascent to be from Badachro via Loch Shieldaig. I could be looking at a 15-20km approach march before I've got a toe on Alligin's lower slopes. And then back. So I'd be highly inclined to repeat the Inveralligin loop.

Does any of this matter? Possibly not. I'm just curious how we individualise our experience of the hills: sometimes we're happy to follow a "standard" route and maybe compare notes with other folk. I might ask someone "How hard did you find the Forcan Ridge?" and gain fellow-feeling from a shared experience. Other times, I might want to forge my own way, to gain an experience that feels unique and personal. 

Things, in the case of lambs, being small rocks and knolls. They don't plan days around getting to the top! That might be a better comparison for the attraction of climbing a tree or a boulder. I'm not saying there isn't any overlap between the two things, but a lot of summits don't really give much in the way of a primal kick. In any case I'm sure the magnetism of summits can't be attributed to one single reason.

Full disclosure, Dave: the very first draft of this article used Blencathra as the example. I switched it because I've made many more repeat ascents of Helvellyn, and many of those have been by bike.

I really like your narrative arc theory, Andy. It's impossible to overstate how deeply embedded story is inside us, from the nursery to the multiplex.

An all too familiar tale, compost. There are so many other worthwhile objectives around there: Great End, Esk Pike, Bowfell, Glaramara. And that's just the summits.

Perhaps not all small rocks and knolls give much in the way of a primal kick...but they don't find out until they are on them.

"...ticked off the boring cluster of rocks in under the Sycamore tree yesterday, won't be back."

Kudos to the first lamb in the field to compleat the LUMPs: the Largish, Upwards of a Metre Prominence knobbles.

Yeah, but let's not spread the word, eh?

Remember munro baggers dont have to worry about other munro baggers trying to knock them off the top.

There is also an interesting concept, that of a mental ‘map’, that people repeat routes because they are familiar and accustomed to them, whether that be walking into town or in the hills.  If you ask them to draw a map everything on the route is reasonably detailed, but then there are huge holes either side as if areas didn’t exist, and it becomes self reinforcing.

Take your Allign example, you had a fine day, on a fine hill, by a fine route. So next time you did the exactly same and then again…..

If you want a differing dander on Allign, walk round the base of it clockwise and you will see an entirely differing aspect, sometimes stunning, then scramble up by the little known or frequented Backdoor ridge, taking you direct to the summit of the last Horn. In the lower part scrambling through the tiers can be as hard or easy as you want. For the the rest it’s better to have dry weather/ground , or in winter good neve. You won’t find that approach and ascent on Walkhighlands!

That clockwise goat-trod sounds great. 

Munros in winter are very odd, though you obviously by being out mid week and in poor weather, and later on in your round with heavy snow cover resulted in an observational bias.  Regular winter hill goers with flexibility wouldn’t have chosen the hills you were on while blanketed, for example I would have gone for an area with less snow and more freeze thaw and our paths wouldn’t have crossed. 

But I take your point sometimes in winter in classic rounds in good conditions you see no one, for example I’ve done the Fisherfield six, two or three times in winter and met no one. My partner ran them once in a day on perfect neve and saw no one. Same for the Mullardoch round not a sole. Knoydart several times in winter completely empty. Granted these are all far from conurbation. But I once had SCNL and all Bidean on a Monday with good viz and good snow to myself. You some times wonder what happens to the thousands of people who do winter skills training each year….who were keen enough to spend money, what happens to them all?

The other times even remote hills can be busy.

I should contradict myself now! March 2012 had no snow and perfect weather. A group of six of us went around Fisherfield in t-shirts. One of the afternoons, we got to the top of A' Mhaighdean at exactly the the same moment as two other substantial parties!

(edit spelling)

I once walked up a very shapely Corbett with a nice flat top and stunning views via a random direction, at exactly the same time another party arrived from a different non standard ascent…….and we all had planned to camp directly on that flat summit spot.  

Definitely a fluke occurrence

There could well be a significant Central Belt-ish aspect to the busier winter hills I tend to see (ditto with ones fairly close to Dundee/Aberdeen/Inverness), compared with the more awkward western Munros even when they have a main road running beneath them. I've almost completely stopped travelling very far north (from Stirling), so I've become quite biased in my perceptions of how busy hills are these days. I do however think that on a lot of popular hills - summer and winter - the older routes have become very quiet in places where there are easier modern options. One example is the east ridge of Ben Lawers - I go up this most years and can't remember when I last met anyone on it, whereas 30 years ago it was quite a standard thing to do. And whoever these days climbs Ben Challum the old and very fine way from Glen Lochay? The out-and-back from the SW seems to get 90% of the traffic, which didn't used to be the case.

I burnt my copy of Munros Tables in a bothy fire many years ago. It was a rather cathartic experience. I think I'd been to the summit of about half of them at the time.

Nowadays I just like to wander wherever the mood takes me and I seldom have a definite plan when I set out. About thirty years ago I moved house in order to be nearer the (Lake District) hills. After an initial flurry of summit bagging I became more interested in the wildlife and so the valleys that retain some deciduous woodland, the more vegetated craggy bits, and the becks and gorges became more interesting.

Although I still go up the hills regularly I probably spend more time on the lower slopes and when I do visit the tops I'm more likely to just walk straight past the actual summits as there is usually a more interesting place to stop for lunch. The hills still keep me sane ( ish! ) as they probably always have but sometimes a two minute walk to the end of the road where there is a superb panorama of the south western fells is enough, without actually feeling the need to set foot on them let alone reach the summits.

I had this conversation with a Bob Graham club member - they know every inch of that route but very little about the landscape a mile away from it

theres a time and a plaice for fish puns - this is a serious thread.

Having thought about this a bit more - who _does_ focus on reaching the top as directly as possible? I don't think I know anyone who would consider the Wythburn route to be the "normal" way up Helvellyn, for instance. The Lingmell route up Scafell Pike and the Pyg Track on Snowdon are obviously wildly popular, but I'd think of them as being the "tourist routes" - I don't think I know any regular walkers who'd think of an out-and-back along either as a default plan for a day out.

I don't know, a lot of this seems like we're imagining stuff about how everyone else acts or thinks or feels and then patting ourselves on the back for deeper and more authentic lovers of the hills than that, and to be honest that's putting my hackles up a bit.

Do you feel like you would have reached that point without the initial flurry of summit bagging, though, or is it just a case of familiarity breeding contempt? If you'd always lived in the South East and visited the hills a couple of times a year, would you still be happy to stick to meandering around the valleys or would you feel like you still had a lot to see and do on the tops?

In practice, that's not the case at all. It might only seem like that if you follow the 'recommended' routes in either the SMC guide, or the McNeish book. But there are always alternatives: just look at a map.

Yeah, I tried hard to dodge that "you're all doing it wrong" vibe.

It's more that i was reflecting on my own hill going history. There have been times when I've been very ticky and that hasn't always delivered the most satisfying experience. As a youngster, at some stage I "did" Grey Friar as an out-and-back from Swirl How. Tick. Job done.

Years later, i approached it in its own right from the Duddon side and found complex, knobbly fellsides, the reservoir, a ring ouzel and it felt like a richer level of engagement with the hill.

Large parts of the book 'Plague Dogs' take place around Grey Friar. If you're only ticking it from nearby fells then you miss a lot of the intricate detail of the Duddon side.

There seems to be a false dichotomy between visiting summits and exploring hills - you can do both.  I have always claimed that I bag hills, not summits which are often just the annoying things that you cannot make your mind up about met somewhere in the middle of the day.

This why gpx files are of little use to me. (although I do like looking at where I went)

Of course. As outlined in my Alligin example earlier, the unreasonable scale of Scotaland may make those alternatives 3 or 4 times longer than the regular route. (Just imagine tackling Bynack More from Delnabo and heading up the Water of Caiplich: you'd probably be looking at a 50km round-trip to avoid the well-worn track from Glenmore)

There's also the question of how the language of bagging can sound oddly reductive: phrases like "Fisherfield Six", "Invervar Four" , "Strathfarrar Four" distort the experience and arguably the culture of hillgoing.

I can't claim these are big problems like Ukraine and Climate Change, but I think it's worth an open-ended discussion to highlight these issues.

Yes, really hate that sort of stuff. If I get asked things like "doing both?" or "doing the four", I usually reply that I havn't decided what I'm doing even if I have.

I'm not sure that's true. For example A'Mhaighdean is probably as often done from Carnmore direction as from Shenavall, or Seana Braigh from the north or from Loch Broom. I actually think it is probably the roadside ones which tend to get done by the same route - the short route from the road.

Or start on the Corbetts and lose all interest in going up a Munro again.

While the blinkered ticking approach does, in some ways, mean missing out, it undoubtedly takes you in to some great areas that you might otherwise never visit. The most healthy outcome is probably that the Munros (and Corbetts) are seen as a great introduction to the Scottish hills rather than an endpoint.

A good question and I guess I don't really know the answer. It was one of those things that just evolved. Perhaps it was a case though of familiarity breeding contentment rather than contempt (I think I've pinched that idea from somewhere, possibly one of Hamish Brown's books).

I did indeed live in the South East at one time although perhaps ironically that was the time when I was most active on the Munros. Working on the railway gave me long weekends every three or four weeks and a quota of free travel so it cost me nothing to get to Fort William or Inverness. From there I used local buses and backpacked, or hired a car for a few days.

I have very fond memories of those times although in reality some of them were really grim especially when the weather was bad. My approach to the hills is just different now. Not better or worse, just different.

I often think about something said to me by a hillgoer from the north of England. "Once you've done the Munros there's nothing to go back to Scotland for is there". I bit my lip and said nothing. "Oh yes there is", I thought. Whether it's Munro summits or Wainwright summits there's still so much more to the hills than summits.

Yes, I could have worded my comment better. I was thinking more about the hills where the second-nearest roadhead is 3-4 times further than the nearest, where it gets a bit skewed. 

It does seem a shame that Munro bagging seems, for many, to have been reduced to following a set of prescribed routes from the SMC book. I've sometimes met puzzlement when doing something different.

When I did my first round of the Munros as a teenager in the late '70s and early '80s such books didn't exist. You had Munro's Tables, which hasn't been revised since 1997, may even be out of print and is certainly out of use, which seems a real shame being a direct link to Sir Hugh himself. And then you consulted the SMC district guides which gave general descriptions of the hills. It was then a matter of looking at the OS map and deciding on a route. I genuinely feel that many people using prescribed routes (let alone downloaded gpx things!) these days are missing out on their hill-going education. I have my complimentary copy of the latest SMC book but have never read any of it and am never likely to do so. These days I try where possible to approach hills from directions I have not used before, again just using paper OS maps for planning. I do sometimes look at Walkhighlands, but only for information on parking spots and initial negotiation of farm buildings or forestry before reaching the open hill.

I'm now very near completing my fourth round (now that every man, woman and their dog has done them once, one probably needs at least four rounds to even pretend one is in any sort of elite😉) but am not keeping track of a fifth and am actually quite looking forward to being freed from the tyranny to just go were the whim takes me. I'm not sure I'll bother with my remaining Corbetts!

By that logic, there's nothing to go to England for in the first place! 

I think you are right. I suspect the great majority of Munro baggers (and non-bagging hillwalkers) see it as a summer activity and lack the skills and confidence to venture in to the hills in winter.

Lol.

I've often wondered what the distribution would look like of the number of ascents that each Munro has had would look like.

There are certainly some hills which get a huge number of ascents, quite possibly largely by non regular hillwalkers because of their proximity to the Central Belt and other specific reasons (Ben Lomond, Ben Lawers, Ben Nevis, Cairngorm would be examples), but what about the rest? My theory is that, due to the exponentially increasing popularity of Munro Bagging, there are many times more people doing the Munros now than have completed them already (a bit like there being more humans alive now than have died in the whole of history). Also people tend to go for the easy pickings early in their round and leave the trickier ones till later. This would explain why there is an eroded strip up, say, Stuchd an Lochain but little signs of passage on Mullach na Dheiragain - the vast majority of people who have been up Stuchd an Lochain have simply not yet got around to doing Mullach na Dheiragain. It is a sobering thought, that, if my theory is correct, Mullach na Dheiragain will be as eroded as Stuchd an Lochain is now in just a few years.

Paths were still unusual on many hills when I did my round. Routes made up from maps to suit bus stops, railway stations , club meets, bothies and hitching spots.   Pack would have a guess of maps in it and a trip would start with a bus ride to Barnton or train to Stirling then hitching. There were oddities - Aonach Mheadhoin done from Achnashellach, Ben Chonzie from Amulree , Beinn Vane from Butterbridge

Something to think about on your fifth ascent of Mullach na Dheiragain?

Maybe a reason to at least take a different route.

That's a very good point, and one that takes widely varied forms for different people. In my own case, I finally got around to completing a round of Munros in 2007, on my 1000th Munro (a deliberate numerical target latterly) and 25 years after my first one. That definitely felt like a line drawn under something in terms of my hillgoing life, and I've not had the slightest urge to do a second round even though I'm now within 20 of Munro no.2000. I've come to see the Munro round as something I needed to do, and also as a sort of apprenticeship. It didn't entirely finish me in terms of orthodox rounds - I tidied up the Wainwrights in 2018, but that was largely because of family connections in Cumbria and spending a lot of time there. I don't think there are going to be any further standard rounds of anything however - no Corbetts or Grahams, no repeat rounds of existing completions - I'm done with that plus age is starting to have its say in terms of energy and enthusiasm.

But having said that, I'm still out lots and have switched my focus and my methodology, as many people do. I've never been a pure bagger of the type you find on the Relative Hills site, and I've come to realise I've got the "runner's mentality" - stay local, do endless repeats, never get bored, slot stuff into fairly short life gaps again and again - even though my actual running days are long gone. But - to go back to the initial "cult of the summit" point - I still very much need to get to the top of whatever hill it is. I need a structure and a target, even if in the case of the Ochils it's a target I've reached 1600-odd times before. I've come to like - and value, I suppose, and be amused by - long straggly sequences of things, eg it's now more than 15 years since I had a month when I didn't get to the top of King's Seat Hill at least once. And this past winter I tidied up (on a couple of pretty dodgy and dangerous-feeling days) a calendar round of Munros - again something I'm absolutely not going to do again. But to do things like that it still does need the summit to be reached - it's just that the mentality is different from a traditional/straightforward round of whatever hill category it happens to be. To return to storm-petrel's point, people do things differently - that's part of the fun of it - even though outwardly it might look like they're all basically doing the same thing.

At the risk of sounding huffy I'd say that it "distorts the culture of hillgoing" a lot less than using trumped-up linguistic nitpicking to create an artificial distinction between us, the true and authentic lovers of the hills, and them, the mindless list-ticking drones.

I've not been counting, but I must have been up KIngseat 500 or so times, easily my most ascended hill. Plenty of months I've not done so though!

Had to look that up. Really contrived!

I have kept count: 422 at present.

I wouldn't say contrived - odd/unusual, yes. Didn't really think about it until I got to within maybe 70-odd, then gradually started targeting gaps when the chance arose. First time I can recall targeting a date was (unsurprisingly) 29 February, which was done courtesy of Carn a' Chlamain in 2012. Had intended the 2008 edition but that was a really foul leap day - roads blocked with snow etc - and anyway I had a funeral to attend. Probably began properly thinking about it from 2013 onwards, but it was always going to be a slow game - which was part of the appeal. Have also done Ben Cleuch-only and Ben Ever-only calendar rounds but they were considerably easier than the any-Munro one. One thing that was very noticeable with some of the late-stage Dec/Jan Munro ones was how much more serious it felt being at 900m in poor conditions (eg on Ben Chonzie) than at 700m (Ochils). That extra 200m made it a very different game.

By the time I started the SMC Munro book was well established so I  used that. Happily the description and line drawings still meant you needed to consult the maps to work out their route.

Took me a couple of years to break out and start route planning myself. Combining Munros, Corbetts and Grahams helped that along given the books focused on single lists only.

I suspect if I had access to GPS routes a lot of that progression might have been slow/non-existent. 

Nowadays it's just routes of interest, most of the way through 2nd and 3rd Munro Rounds, but I have no interest in tying those up. 

An unusually intelligent thoughtful article. You can be very proud of that one Norman!

My own experience relates to the Lakes, haven't been up to Scotland for several years, no aspirations to do all the Munros although there are several I still want to do.

9 years ago I decided to try and do the Wainwright's in 5 years before I got to 60 (the mathematically astute amongst you will be able to work out my age 😁). I'd previously over the years done about a third of them but wasn't counting those. Even though this is summit bagging and a popular list, it still takes you to some fairly empty locations and gives you a wider appreciation of the whole district.

I can see the appeal of the fairly recent books that describe how to do the Wainwright's in the fewest walks, etc but personally I don't like them because it takes away all the planning and part of going for a walk in the hills should IMO involve working out where you're going to go, not just slavishly following someone else's work (however, each to their own, whatever).

About half way through I 1) realised that on any objective criteria, the Wainwright's is a pretty rubbish list (that's not a criticism, merely an observation), and 2) discovered the DoBIH with all the other subjective and objective lists. Being a bit geeky with things like lists this put me in a quandary for a year or two - which lists to also complete, which to ignore.

Eventually I decided I was going to do EVERYTHING worthwhile within Cumbria (i.e. area 34 in the DoBIH). To me this means everything listed from 300m upwards, and below 300m, any Wainwright Outlying fells, or those with enough prominence (humps and sub-humps) plus a handful of oddities.

The other thing the lists showed me was that I'd just "missed" loads of tops already; e.g. Bowfell North Summit, Shelter Crags, etc. This gave me another "criteria", I'm avoiding "repeats" for as long as possible. It'd be too contrived to totally avoid repeats when picking off some of the minor tops, but by leaving these until last, those repeats will feel as fresh as possible.

What all of this has meant is that although I'm still list ticking, I get to some pretty obscure bits of the Lakes and I take some "interesting" pathless routes to enchain some of the weeny little bumps I "need" to visit. It also means I avoid the crowded honeypots even when I'm in the same area and discover many worthwhile and beautiful locations that I would otherwise have missed.

Two things I've discovered, 1) the tiny hills are in some ways the most difficult because unlike anything with altitude (covered by CROW), access is not guaranteed - will I be able to get across these fields? can I park anywhere nearby? and 2) do the obscure little hills when the bracken is down - trying to reach the exact summit of some pathless little bracken covered bump in summer can be a nightmare.

I'll very soon be into the walks that will include repeats and I hope to have done the lot within 10 years of starting (told you I was a bit geeky) which means having to repeat Napes Needle (ex-Nuttall) which I'm hoping to do on the 50th anniversary of my first rock climb - Needle Ridge, if I can get up there enough this might even be my "completer" 😁.

That is a good point which I'd not thought of though I've been doing Munros and Corbetts in parallel the last few years and regularly combining them.

One noticeable thing about Corbetts is that the average effort per hill seems greater than Munros because of their relative pathlessness and the required height drop meaning they are less often linked.

As recommended by Hamish Brown as far back as 1988 in his Corbetts book - he even included a list of adjacent Munros/Corbetts for easy planning.

It varies quite widely across different people and situations of course, but in general a round of Corbetts appears to require more days than a round of Munros, even though there are around 60 fewer Corbetts (disregarding the argument - which has a lot of validity - that English and Welsh equivalents are proper Corbetts, not just Furth-type things as per Munros). The traditional average number of Munros per day for longish-term Munro-goers is about 1.75 (I'm on 1.79  for 40+ years of effort). The equivalent figure for Corbetts is harder to come by but I once asked around and a lot of people were saying about 1.25. On that basis, a Corbett round takes about 18 days longer than a Munro round assuming the lists are done separately (which quite often seems to be the case even though it's an odd way to go about things - there are plenty of people who have been on just two or three Corbetts by the end of their Munro round then by the time they finish the Corbetts they've only added four or five repeat Munros, if that).

One of the benefits (?) of age is the gradual reduction of that urge to achieve/overcome that seems to be one of the defining properties of youth. I often wonder about this as someone who definitely had those urges as a rock climber - chasing grades or a big tick. Less so in caving where this kind of mentality isn't really apparent. I've always looked on the hills (and the countryside in general) as a refuge or escape from much of what makes modern life so rubbish. When we were in lockdown a couple of years ago and unable to drive I'd head off through the fields and sit under a big old ash tree and just watch the cows and birds and I could feel the stress of work fading away. It didn't matter that I wasn't on some dramatic mountain top. Just being there was enough. If you get to a certain age you realise that we're all on an inevitable decline in our physical capabilities. Sure, you can exercise and diet to compensate to some extent but time will inexorably win in the end. As someone affected by long covid that is also a reminder of my own personal mortality and to just enjoy being outside and not chasing a summit.

Thanks. Just as conservationists advocate rewiggling becks, we're all about rewiggling debate. 😉

With you having almost finished a fourth Munro round you're probably getting to within doable range of tidying up a calendar round if you fancied it. You're likely to have had 600-odd Munro days even without counting additional spares, so chances are you're within 70 or 80 of a full calendar unless you've long-term lopsided time-of-year habits. Mind you, having said that, it took me 1097 days (effectively three years) and that was with quite a lot of targeting in the latter stages. The pre-Christmas dates can be awkward - busy with domestic stuff, not much daylight, dodgy conditions/roads - and there's the old 29 February problem, but it's an achievable slow target for anyone with a substantial tally of Munro (or whatever) days.

Unfortunately, having recorded my obsessive teenage round on an immense hand written scroll, I have since only used one of those wall maps (go over outline of triangles for second time, fill it in for third and circle it for fourth), so have no idea of dates!

Incidentally, my scroll tells me I averaged 1.92 Munros per day for my first round.

That scroll is awesome. "And it came to pass that Robert, who was of the Durran house, passed through these lands. He teetereth on the pinnacles in the land called Torridon but, though the skies were stormy, the Lord beheld the quality of his pictures and did not smite him."

We linked Meith Bheinn, An Stac and Sgurr nan Coireachan last year.

I doubt very few people visit the plateau between An Stac and Being Garbh but it would be a boulderers paradise if a tad closer to the road. 

Fine scroll, as Norman says. It's a pity you don't have calendar round data, though. I've got exact dates for all my Munro days bar the first two, where it's just month/year (Aug and Oct 1982). When it came to tidying up the calendar I made a point of not finishing in either of those months, just in case I'd already done the date unawares. As it was I finished on 3 March this year (on Stuc a' Chroin), which was a lovely day after several really foul/difficult ones in Dec/Jan when I should probably have waited for another year.

That's on the high side although I suspect most people (me included) have higher ratios in the initial wave of youthful enthusiasm. A friend in Penrith tells me his first round (of two) went at 2.5 Munros per day, 277 in 111 days. That's certainly high, unusually so perhaps.

I think mine would have been higher had I not started very young (age 7) and done quite a number of singles which I would almost certainly linked to others had I been older (Ben Vorlich, Ben Dorain Dreish, Stobinian........ ) 

I'm a self confessed Munro bagger, but I am not ashamed nor apologetic.

Living south of the border I plan, find excitement travelling to and ascending (sometimes not) the dramatic / lofty / remote / subdued summits of Scotland's highest mountains. It's a joy often woven with the suffering of perseverance.

Am I following in the footsteps of those before me? Yes. I am doing something novel, no. Do I e joy peeking into some of Scotland's least visited corners? Absolutely.

Bagging Munros is both a fad and a joy. I dare say as a an Englishman (albeit of border revier decent) I draw the ire of those who despise the summits as superficial objectives, for me they are a release and sense of escapism.

Bring on the mf Corbetts.

Enjoyable thought provoking article - there is so much more to a mountain that its summit.

Many years ago, before the Lakeland fells were known as 'Wainwrights', I used to be an ardent peak bagger, but nowadays I am more interested in finding an interesting route over or through the mountains as I am in summiting, although a summit can provide a focus for a walk.

There is as much if not more pleasure to be had from visiting delectable places like the Rigg Beck valley, with its patches of native woodland clinging to the heather clad slopes of Scar Crag, or seeing the glowing granite cliffs of Carn Etchachan reflected in the still waters of Loch Etchachan just after sunrise, as there is in bagging the summit of Crag Hill or Ben Macdui.

Tried to smite me - Alligin was my fourth munro, and I got hit by a thunderstorm on the ridge.   One of two times I got caught out.

Love that scroll!

I have a remarkably similar, dog-eared record, only my average is 0.0074 per day...