The Munros: A History

CHAPTER 1

Veterans and Visionaries

ON THE LEVEL bealach below the high point of the Beinn a’ Ghlò ridge in Perthshire, the wind shrieks like a banshee as it funnels furiously through the gap in the ridge. A lone figure is crouched over a wooden-shafted alpenstock, steadying himself in the frenzied maelstrom. The abominable cold impels him to persevere upwards, dragging his heavy hobnail boots through deep powder snow to another wind scoured bealach 500 feet above.

The figure then turns to face north-east with the merciless wind now thankfully behind him. The manic, turbulent gusts are now whipping up snow

in spiral columns several hundred feet high, penetrating everything, filling pockets and drifting between waistcoat and shirt, where it melted and then froze into a solid wedge of ice.¹

The wind has partially stripped the final section of summit ridge of snow to reveal lethal, verglassed, angular rocks on which he attempts to gain purchase. Wild eddies of spindrift momentarily conceal maddening pockets of deep snow, into which he clumsily staggers, cursing under his breath.

After what seems like an eternity, his smarting eyes spot a substantial pile of heavily iced rocks, which he aims for like a man possessed. On reaching the cairn, with his back still to the buffeting wind, he lays down his long ice-axe and then removes his woollen mittens, stuffing them under his tweed jacket.

His hands, already cold, reach into a jacket pocket and pull out a round container. Fumbling desperately, he opens the lid, removes a pocket aneroid and proceeds to perform various height measurements, despite the frenzied flapping of his Inverness cape, which he continually pulls round him for extra warmth.

Leaden clouds are now scudding across the sky to reveal acres of blue above sculptured waves of white peaks in all directions. Thankfully, he has already recorded details of the views on a lower summit:

Views good – Cairngorms and Ben Alder groups, the Glencoe hills, Schiehallion (which does not show to advantage from here), Ben Lawers looking well, with Stobinian over his left shoulder, Ben Chonzie, the Fifeshire Lomonds and Sidlaws showing well, with the smoke of Dundee behind. The special feature, however, is the fine view of the higher peaks of Beinn a’ Ghlò.²

The highest peak of Beinn a’ Ghlò, on which he now stands, is a freezing and furious cauldron from which he knows he must immediately descend. His hands, now red and numb with cold, struggle to replace the aneroid back in its container and the container back to ice-lined pocket. He forces his Balmoral bonnet more firmly onto his head and briefly touches his beard, now a frozen mass of tiny icicles, as are his moustache and eyebrows. Before replacing his mitts, he pulls a solid ice-caked chunk of tablet from a pocket and forces it into his mouth, slowly releasing its sweetness and energy to his flagging form. Finally, he reaches into an inside pocket for a hip-flask. His fingers are useless, unfeeling appendages, but he manages to unscrew the flask and swig back a mouthful of the amber nectar within.

In seconds he replaces the flask, dons his mitts and grabs his axe to begin the steep descent to Glen Loch. On his journey through deep, drifting snow, he mercifully escapes the worst of the wind, but the relief is short-lived: blood returns to his hands, producing painful hot-aches. Over two hours later he reaches the lonely outpost of Daldhu and the start of the last seven miles through Gleann Fearnach to his nightly destination at the estate house of Dirnanean.

In the fastly fading light of the Scottish winter, he finally reaches shelter, where his hosts

had to scrape me down with a knife to get the frozen snow off me before I could enter the house.³

He goes on to remark that ‘in all my winter experience I never suffered so severely from cold’.

During that winter’s day of 22 January 1891, Hugh Munro had completed a 20-mile mountain traverse from Blair Atholl to Dirnanean. An hour later, a thawed out, bathed and freshly dressed Munro sat before a roaring log fire with dram in hand, awaiting dinner. He would certainly deserve it.

Leaving aside the obvious fitness, fortitude and sheer determination of someone tackling the above expedition, which even in summer would be considered a long and challenging route, two observations stand out. Firstly, that the route was attempted in winter, and secondly, that a return to his point of departure at Blair Atholl was declined in favour of a new nightly destination.

Concerning the first point, Munro, a member of the Scottish Mountaineering Club (SMC), had previously intimated in the SMC Journal that he was looking for companions to join him in hill forays during the months of January, February and March, being ‘much engaged’ later in the year. It is also apparent that he relished winter climbing, and his series of articles entitled ‘Winter Ascents’ in early editions of the SMC Journal are proof of his finer appreciation of the Scottish peaks when under a mantle of snow and ice. He acknowledges that

it cannot be denied that some few disadvantages attend winter and early Spring climbing, but I am sure that all who have tried it will agree that the pleasure derived is more than ample compensation.⁴

I would surmise that such ample compensation would struggle to exert itself on his Beinn a’ Ghlò traverse of 1891!

Concerning the second point, Munro had a passion for long cross-country routes through remote areas, often lasting several days. These were the days before motor transport dictated one’s return to their starting place. Undoubtedly, the advent of the motor-car opened up large areas of the Highlands to the general public, but contrarily became a ‘millstone’ for those wishing to indulge in long through-routes.

After many other such skirmishes in the Scottish hills, in September of that year, Hugh Munro released his famous ‘Tables of Heights over 3,000 feet’, blissfully unaware that in doing so, his very name would soon become synonymous with Scottish mountains over 3,000 feet and that he was destined to become a legendary figure in Scottish Mountaineering.

Hugh Munro was undoubtedly the visionary in the formation of ‘the Tables’, but to fully understand the man and his mountains we must step back a century or more and examine briefly the various strands and influences which ultimately led to their publication.

In 1791, exactly a hundred years before the launch of Munro’s Tables, the Ordnance Survey (OS) was founded. The existence of reliable and accurate mapping had an obvious, crucial bearing on this list. Almost half a century before this, at the time of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion, there were no reliable maps of the Highlands in existence. Their absence at the time makes Charles Edward Stuart’s five-month wander through the Highlands as a prime fugitive, with £30,000 on his head, a truly monumental feat. During his 22-week flight through the heather, he traversed many Munros and discovered a bewildering variety of hideouts in the high and lonely places.

He probably skulked past more summits than we are aware of today and was at times so near to the enemy’s campfires that he and his helpers could hear the soldiers’ conversations. By the time he escaped to France in September 1746, the Prince must have been a thoroughly seasoned mountaineer, weather beaten, midge-ridden, skeletal, exhausted and a shadow of his former self. The iconic image of the ‘Bonnie Prince’ with kilt, blue doublet, powdered wig and starched lace ruffles is perhaps a poor reflection of the ‘real’ Prince. In a sense, Charles Stuart could be considered the first hill gangrel in Scotland, despite his wanderings lacking any recreational nature. The first recorded ascent of a Munro, however, had already been made by ‘Mad’ Colin Campbell of Glenlyon, around 1590, when he climbed Stuchd an Lochain in Glen Lyon.

In the wake of the ‘Forty-Five’ and the Culloden bloodbath, ‘Butcher’ Cumberland’s Deputy Quartermaster, General Watson, decided that a map of the Highlands was essential. A specialist detachment was posted to Fort Augustus in 1747 to spend the next eight years on the Survey. One particular man stood out as largely responsible for the final product, a 21-yearold engineer named William Roy, whose competence and quest for perfection ensured his well-earned promotion to Surveyor-General of Coasts in Great Britain in 1765. Roy had always championed the formal establishment of a National Survey for the whole of Great Britain, and it is largely due to his vision that the Ordnance Survey was founded in 1791, a year after he died.

One final observation concerning Roy and mountain heights and topography was his visit to Schiehallion in 1774, when the Astronomer Royal, the Rev Nevil Maskelyne, succeeded in estimating the mass of the Earth by observing the gravitational attraction of the mountain on plumb lines. Roy spent an extra three days making geometrical and barometrical observations on neighbouring mountains and subsequently produced a paper entitled ‘Rules for Measuring Heights with a Barometer’. At the same time, Dr Charles Hutton, an eminent geologist, came up with the ingenious notion of contour lines, which was to revolutionise cartography. Spot heights are all very well, but only show… well, height. Contour lines give a clear indication of the topography of mountains and general landscape, which we all take for granted today. Their general usage, however, did not come about until the mid-1800s.

Following the inauguration of the Ordnance Survey, the ambitious plan was the eventual production of a series of one-inch to the mile maps for the whole of Great Britain. Hot off the press and the first to appear was the map of Kent, published in New Year 1801. The first decade of the 19th century saw the heights of some 300 hills in England and Wales calculated with reasonable accuracy and the completion of the English series of maps.

The surveying principle of triangulation, using trigonometry, formed the basis of Ordnance Survey map-making, creating a three-dimensional interlocking network of triangles across the country. The latitude, longitude and height of two specific points could be used to determine the same for a third point, using a theodolite to measure the various angles. The ‘points’ in question are Triangulation Points or ‘Trig Points’, of which more modern versions can be found on many Munro summits.

By 1810, the triangulation was finally pushing on into Scotland, with all the extra challenges of terrain, weather and wildness that this would entail, and by 1819, the Survey was finally completed.

As a wee aside, a remark made by well-known outdoor guru Cameron McNeish in his fascinating biography There’s Always the Hills stands out in my mind. His loathing of mathematics is most apparent, when in maths classes he would

gaze across the city to the blue outline of the Campsie Fells… and daydream, much to the annoyance of my teachers.⁵

(Totally understandable!) But the remark in question:

To this day I’m not sure what purpose algebra and trigonometry plays in the great scheme of things⁶

strikes me as rather ironic. The very maps which he no doubt uses to plan and ‘daydream’ were created using trigonometry and triangulation. Being an ex-mathematics teacher, I felt impelled to raise this, yet I will forgive him just this once… but don’t let it happen again!

In 1810, the Rev George Skene DD made some phenomenally accurate barometric height measurements in the Cairngorms, being only four feet out with the height of Ben Macdui. After sending his son to climb Ben Nevis with his barometer, Ben Macdui lost the pride of place it had held until then as Britain’s highest mountain. There was even an idea bandied about to build a burial vault 100 feet high on Ben Macdui’s summit to reinstate its prior glory, a plan which fortunately failed to materialise.

As William Roy had been the prime instigator of the post-Forty-five map of Scotland, the Ordnance Survey of Scotland also had its own prime motivator, the colourful Thomas Colby, who became Director General in 1820. Like Roy, Colby possessed almost inexhaustible patience and a dogged determination to see the job through.

In the summer of 1819, Colby led a party covering the eastern side of Inverness-shire, Ross-shire, Caithness and Orkney Mainland, walking 513 miles in 22 days – an average of more than 23 miles a day. With only one rest day, Colby then led a fresh party west and north-west covering 586 miles in another 22 days – an average of more than 26 miles a day. Considering the roughness of the terrain, the weight of food and equipment, the often-abysmal weather and the time spent observing and measuring, these itineraries are truly mind-boggling. Colby possessed a fitness, toughness and a resolute indomitability that left others far behind. His men, too, who endured endless days carrying massive loads through wild, pathless country, should not be forgotten.

It was therefore highly fitting that the completion of the great Scottish Survey was marked by a celebration. All involved in this remarkable endeavour were treated to a mammoth feast, the chief dish being an enormous plum pudding weighing nearly a hundred pounds. The pudding was suspended by a cord from a wooden beam and boiled for a whole day in a copper pot. Colby, his staff and his men, after wolfing down the ‘excellent’ pudding, drank a toast: ‘SUCCESS TO THE TRIG!’

Alongside all the manic map-making enterprises of the 18th and 19th centuries, another group of intrepid explorers were winding their way to the Scottish Highlands. As what could be described as the first Highland tourists, people like Thomas Pennant, Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, Dorothy Wordsworth, Sir Walter Scott and countless others began to see natural landscape not just as something to be tamed and measured, but to be appreciated for its inherent beauty. Sir Walter Scott introduced a whole new generation of visitors to the Highlands, and in particular, the Trossachs, an area for which he had a particular affinity.

It is also well-documented that a fair proportion of these pioneering travellers climbed mountains for pure enjoyment. One of the earliest of these was a young man named William Burrell who embarked on a Scottish tour from London in July 1758. Whilst staying at Luss on Loch Lomond, he related:

On the opposite side (of Loch Lomond) stands a mountain of the same name of a prodigious height, overshadowing all the neighbouring rocks; the way to it is very irksome and in some places so steep that we were obliged to crawl on hands and knees. From the beginning of the ascent to the summit is five English miles; in several parts we sunk up to our knees in mire; we were fortunate enough to have a fine day.⁷

A quarter of a millennium later, Burrell would have witnessed hordes of hillwalkers hauling themselves up the well-trodden trade route to the summit. What on earth would he have thought? Being within a stone’s throw of Glasgow and Scotland’s southernmost Munro, Ben Lomond is well-visited and is the most common first Munro to be ascended.

However, not all travellers at this time were enamoured by mountainous scenery, and Johnson and Boswell described one mountain as ‘a considerable protuberance’. Others perceived mountains as fearsome, menacing places, usually emphasising the gloomy, ominous and melancholic aspects of the dark cliffs and crags.

For some, it was not just the mountains that provoked fear and menace, but the spartan nature of overnight accommodation. Thomas Pennant, when in Sutherland, was unfortunate in encountering ‘a gigantic and awful landlady; a spouse fit for Fin-Mac-Cuil himself’ (I’ve met some of these as well). Johnson and Boswell at Glenelg were forced to supply their own hay on which to sleep in their greatcoats. A certain John MacCulloch (1773–1835) describes the wretchedness of breakfast in a ‘vile pot-house’ in Taynuilt. So miserably sluggish was the serving of musty bread, paste-like toast, tepid tea and ‘damp and melancholy sugar’ that the clouds were well down on Ben Cruachan, despite early morning sunshine. Yet ‘a delicious herring, hot from the fire’ provided temporary cheer.

MacCulloch was planning an ascent of Ben Cruachan and indeed ascended many other Scottish peaks, mostly between 1811 and 1821. He could lay claim to being Scotland’s first peak-bagger, but his bold assertion that ‘I have ascended almost every principal mountain in Scotland’ must be taken with more than a pinch of salt. Despite his sub-standard breakfast in Taynuilt and the lowering clouds, he claimed Ben Cruachan’s summit, one of around twenty he completed in Scotland – not quite every principal mountain. However, a look at his list of conquests reveals that he had made ascents of such notable summits as Ben Nevis, Ben Lawers, Schiehallion, An Teallach, Ben Lomond, The Cobbler, Ben Ledi, Ben More on Mull, Goat Fell (Arran), Alisa Craig and Dun Caan (Raasay), to name around half. By ‘principal’ mountains, he was referring to the ones which he regarded as having presence or attitude and therefore were worth climbing.

One notable failure however, was the ‘iconic, unassailable pillar’ of Suilven in the far north. In 1820 he wrote:

To almost all but the shepherds, Suil Veinn is inaccessible; one of our sailors, well used to climbing, reached the summit with difficulty, and had much more in descending.⁸

His success (or lack of it) on Skye was equally abysmal, and he came to the conclusion that the main Cuillin ridge was totally out of bounds for mere mortals:

The upper peaks are mere rocks, and with acclivities so steep and so smooth, as to render all access impossible.⁹

I would not doubt that even today, a few hillwalkers would totally agree with this assertion!

MacCulloch’s trips to Scotland between 1811 and 1821 were not purely for recreational purposes; he had been appointed the post of geologist to the Trigonometrical Survey during these years, despite having studied medicine at Edinburgh University. Of course, at this time, having a scientific background in any discipline was essentially sufficient to become proficient in another. He was in fact later commissioned to produce a geological map of Scotland. However, MacCulloch is probably best remembered for his four-volume Highlands and Western Islands of Scotland, published in 1824, both a guide and a personal account of his explorations and mountaineering ascents. Of the various tourist guides which were starting to appear around this time, MacCulloch’s is generally viewed as being superior.

One publication with obvious associations to Munro’s Tables was Scottish Tourist (1825) by W Rhind, which contained the first table of ‘Mountains in Scotland’. Although the list is longer than MacCulloch’s ‘principal mountains’, it is essentially a potpourri of hills of all heights with no obvious criterion for inclusion other than the author’s preference. Though many of the given heights are relatively accurate, others are ludicrously adrift, with an Orkney hill given a height of nearly 4,000 feet. Meall Fuar-mhonaidh on Loch Ness side attains Munro status despite it being a Graham (under 2,500 feet), and Buachaille Etive Mòr shrinks to 2,500 feet. The inclusion of Alisa Craig and Calton Hill are also interesting, as the latter could in no way be considered a mountain.

Whilst the likes of map-makers Roy and Colby and early mountain climbers such as MacCulloch had distinct, but chronologically more distant links to the eventual creation of Munro’s Tables, there remains one individual who played a largely uncelebrated but substantial part in their formation – Matthew Forster Heddle. Heddle remained in relative obscurity until his great-great grandson, Hamish H Johnston, wrote his biography, published in 2015, entitled Matthew Forster Heddle: Mineralogist and Mountaineer. Quite how this ‘unsung hero’ failed to find his way into Munroist culture and literature is something of a mystery, but hopefully, Johnston’s book and this account will go some way in addressing this serious imbalance.

Heddle was born in Orkney in 1828 and descended from Estate-owners. He enjoyed a comfortable home life and from a young age displayed a natural inclination towards the collection, classification and preservation of botanical specimens, shells, rocks and minerals. Curiously, Hugh Munro himself possessed exactly the same collecting tendencies as a youngster. The wild, natural coastline of Orkney and the surrounding sea were both a magnet for Heddle’s inquiring and intrepid nature, and as well as wandering ‘amongst the dangerous precipices and lofty sea-cliffs of his native islands’, he would also ‘traverse the wild seas’ alone in a small boat.

From the age of nine, Heddle attended Edinburgh Academy and Merchiston Castle, where he excelled in academia. His mother had died when he was only four years of age, and his father tragically died just a decade later. However, Heddle still returned to his beloved Orkney during the long summer holidays to enjoy outdoor adventures in the company of his brothers.

Heddle went on to study medicine at Edinburgh University, where the curriculum also included natural history. Under the watchful eye of eminent mineralogist Professor Robert Jameson, Heddle wrote a chemical-mineralogical thesis relating mineralogical elements to possible medical treatments, a vision far ahead of its time. Following his graduation in 1851, he became a doctor in Edinburgh’s Grassmarket area, which at the time was the worst part of the city for poverty and disease. Despite more British medical graduates training in Scotland than in England at the time and Edinburgh’s citizens enjoying the highest quality of medical care anywhere in the world, the dismal, squalid nature of his surroundings and his low salary made Heddle

look forward to the time when he might escape from the duties of a profession which was evidently so uncongenial to his natural tastes and inclination.¹⁰

Heddle retained his sanity by pursuing a parallel career in his true passions of geology and mineralogy, becoming president of the Edinburgh Geological Society aged only 23. It was largely because of Heddle that the National Museum of Scotland came into being following his successful championing for a Natural History Museum. His desire to leave medicine was finally realised in 1858 when he took up a position as chemistry lecturer at St Andrew’s University, eventually graduating to Professor of Chemistry in 1862. At a time when universities were an all-male environment, Heddle defended women’s education and in the year of his Professor-ship took on Elizabeth Garrett as a student in his class, only for the university to invalidate her matriculation. Not to be outdone, Garrett took private lessons from Heddle and eventually became Britain’s first female doctor. Heddle also married in 1858 and went on to produce a healthy ten offspring!

The academic year at St Andrews allowed an extremely generous six months holiday, giving Heddle full opportunity to pursue his linked passions of mineralogy, geology and the exploration of the Scottish Highlands and Islands, usually accompanied by his great friend Patrick Dudgeon. During this fruitful and fulfilling period of his life, Heddle published a profusion of papers, many seminal, and in 1876 he cofounded the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, becoming its second president.

Despite Heddle’s life and career flourishing at this time, a series of setbacks tested his resolve and endurance. University finances were becoming critical and Heddle himself was running low on cash, as well as developing health problems. Following a short stint in South Africa as adviser to a gold-mining company, he retired from the university on the grounds of ill health, but was granted Emeritus status. He continued to write papers until the last year of his life in 1897. His classic work, the two volumes of The Mineralogy of Scotland, were published posthumously in 1901.

The late 1870s and1880s were Heddle’s most prolific time in the Scottish mountains, and in 1879 he told his friend Archibald Geikie that

I have not been and am not at all well; my heart is troubling me much – there is nothing puts it right like the mountain air, and Billy the 3rd.¹¹

(The latter was a favourite geological hammer!) The benefits of the mountains for his physical health, however, were overshadowed by their benefits for his mental health. His sheer pleasure of being among hills was wholly apparent, both in his conversations and written accounts, commenting that

every geologist must be more or less of an artist; he is none the worse if he be a little of a poet also.¹²

His poetic sensibilities are beautifully illustrated when he describes the hills of his beloved Sutherland as

Hills of all fashions and forms and tints – mountains which rear their heads like waves which are curling aloft to break, and have been petrified in the poise.¹³

‘Stac Polly is a porcupine in a condition of extreme irascibility’, he wrote, while ‘its weathered pinnacles project against the sky in a wondrously felicitous similitude of human forms’.

Heddle’s preferred type of walk were long, demanding, multi-day cross-country treks, when he could immerse himself completely in the landscape, gathering geological evidence as he went. His knapsack would grow heavier from accumulation of geological specimens, but this certainly did not deter him from climbing hills en route. He records having climbed 80 peaks during the course of his Sutherland fieldwork, in such areas as Torridon, Assynt and Coigach. It is evident that the more of these expeditions Heddle undertook, the more he enjoyed the hills for themselves, with rock and boulder hunting almost getting in the way. He also surmised that boulders found at high levels were most likely to have been there indefinitely, so he generally stuck to mountain ridges and tops, in contrast to previous rock searchers who had stayed low in the glens.

In addition to Archibald Geikie, several other companions regularly joined Heddle on his numerous exploits – namely, the Rev William Peyton, Colin Phillip and John Harvie-Brown. With the latter, Heddle spent several summers in the mid-1880s, island-hopping and generally enjoying a social life of drinks, jokes, songs and female appreciation. However, it was Peyton and Phillip who joined Heddle on many of his cross-country jaunts. Phillip was a proficient landscape artist, a keen mountaineer and one of the original members of the Scottish Mountaineering Club when it was founded in 1889.

During 1882, the Rev Peyton joined Heddle on a mammoth expedition which initially included the likes of Glen Dochart, Glen Lyon, Creag Meagaidh and eventually Glen Shiel, where they based themselves at the Cluanie Inn. This inn has been a honeypot for hillwalkers for nearly two centuries and has recently been updated and extended. It was the next part of the trip, however, that had been a long-held hankering for Heddle.

Between Glen Shiel and Glen Carron to the north lies a vast tract of wild, mountainous country, containing nearly 40 Munros and where no roads penetrate. Three great east-west glens cut deep into this wilderness; Glen Affric, Glen Cannich and Glen Strathfarrar. The bulk of the area is covered presently by one of my favourite Ordnance Survey Landranger sheets (Sheet 25), and many an hour has been spent drooling and dreaming with a dram over possible future forays into this wonderful area. Having previously completed two multi-day traverses of the region – one north to south with a crowd of school kids and one south to north on a trans-Scotland walk – I have a deep affinity for this spectacular area.

What Heddle had termed ‘the great traverse’ was a route of some 45 miles from the Cluanie Inn northwards to Strathcarron and taking four days, staying in the homes of shepherds and keepers. Today, ‘shepherds and keepers’ would be replaced by bothies or tents. The other main difference between then and now are the enlargements of both Loch Mullardoch (Glen Cannich) in 1951 and Loch Monar (Glen Strathfarrar) in 1962 as part of post-war hydro-electric schemes. Both lochs have now drowned out parts of Heddle’s route and the cottages where they stayed. Looking at the grotesquely enlarged versions of these lochs today, with their ugly ‘tide-lines’ and massive concrete dams, there is a feeling that both a unique Highland lifestyle and the peaceful innocence of two beautiful Highland glens have vanished forever.¹⁴

An article by Heddle describing his ‘great traverse’, ‘South West Ross’, appeared in the Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal posthumously in 1898 and was one of only two full accounts from his own pen, despite having undertaken countless other long expeditions in the Highlands. Several years after his traverse and other visits to the area, a geologist named Lionel Hinxman, a founding