Great Mountain Days in Scotland. Dan Bailey
at 1:25,000 and Landranger sheets at 1:50,000. The latter are generally better for long hill walks since they cover more ground per sheet at sufficient (but not excessive) detail. Popular mountain areas are also covered by the small independent cartographer Harvey, their Superwalker (1:25,000) and British Mountain Map (1:40,000) series having been designed to contain only information pertinent to outdoor users. The relevant maps are given in the information box for each walk.
Scotland’s hills must be among the best documented anywhere, covered by a library of guidebooks in a thriving ‘literary’ tradition dating back to the 19th century. Activity-specific guides are available for every mainstream outdoor activity – post-lunch glen strolls, long-distance hikes, serious hill walks, scrambling, climbing, paddling, and cycling in its various sub-genres. Regional guides provide detail on a given area; national guides take a broad-brush approach or (like this book) they cherry pick. There are too many books to list, but for some specific recommendations see Appendix 3.
Ben Loyal from a tarp bivi on Ben Hope (Walk 1)
Dramatic – and unavoidable – scrambling on the east ridge of Lurg Mhòr (Walk 14)
Scrambles
This book does not go out of its way to find steep rock, and none of the walks involves graded climbing (in summer at least). For this reason the traverse of Skye’s Cuillin ridge has been omitted, although it is the greatest of all Scottish hill challenges. But in these rugged mountains scrambling can’t always be entirely avoided. In some cases the best walker’s route to a summit happens to involve some gentle clambering, such as the famous Carn Mòr Dearg (CMD) Arête onto Ben Nevis (Walk 26) or the prow of The Stuic on Lochnagar (Walk 42).
For easy grade 1 scrambles such as these rock climbing skills and gear are unnecessary, but a head for heights is essential. Even the simplest scrambles need respect in wet, windy or icy conditions. Despite the non-climbing caveat, there are a few walks in this book that err towards mountaineering. After all, no collection of great Scottish mountain walks would be complete without the traverse of Aonach Eagach (grade 2), Liathach (grade 2) or the formidable An Teallach (grade 3). If there is a way to avoid the harder hands-on sections of a walk (and there usually is), then the description will mention it.
Scrambling grades are expressed numerically in ascending order of difficulty.
Grade 1
Where hillwalking gets hands-on. In good weather these are routes that walkers with no scrambling experience should be capable of, given a reasonable tolerance for heights. Very limited technical difficulty in climbing terms, although there will be some exposure and a fall could be nasty.
Grade 2
Steeper rock, generally bigger drops, less easily escaped from and perhaps with less intuitive route finding. The harder steps may feel extremely daunting, although they’ll usually be short lived. Potentially very unpleasant in poor weather. Prior scrambling experience highly advised.
Grade 3
Committing, serious and technically challenging, routes of this grade are tantamount to climbing proper. Best left to competent and suitably equipped mountaineers.
Summer scrambles become winter mountaineering routes (Aonach Eagach, Walk 28)
Seasonal variations
Hillwalking is a year-round activity. The chief advantages of late spring or early summer are almost endless daylight – at the best, over 18hrs a day in the far north – and relatively few midges. Mid-summer may be less ideal than expected, being high season for both crowds and midges. The weather, too, is often wet and humid at mid-summer; but don’t let that spoil things. Early autumn can be lovely on the hills, but November is often the opposite.
The approaching tread of winter brings dwindling daylight and worsening weather, and big hill routes are correspondingly harder to pull off. Summer seems a distant memory in the chill gloom of mid-winter. Life was once cheerily described by Nabokov as ‘a crack of light between two eternities of darkness’; he could as easily have been talking about a Scottish winter day. Around the winter solstice in the far north, daylight hours dwindle to a little over 6 in 24. During this period hill walks routinely start and finish in the dark, and a determined pace is needed for tricky ground to be safely negotiated before sunset.
Winter walking is an activity defined not by the calendar, but by the state of the ground. If a January thaw has stripped snow cover to the grass, then the hills may feel barely more challenging than in June; but, conversely, full-on ‘winter’ conditions can often be encountered in spring and autumn. Blame it on Scotland’s unpredictable temperate maritime climate.
In whatever month snow and ice are encountered, they transform Scotland’s mountains, giving them a serious arctic/alpine edge and placing big demands on a walker’s skills, fitness and equipment. If winter conditions are expected, then an ice axe and crampons should be considered essential – and they’re naturally no good without the ability to use them safely. Other winter must-haves include ski goggles, headtorch and spare batteries, spare hat and gloves, and a bivvi bag or group shelter.
Climbing into the sun on the north ridge of Ben Starav (Walk 30), with the peaks of Buachaille Etive Mòr (Walk 28) prominent behind
Meall nan Tarmachan from Beinn Ghlas (Walk 37)
Midsummer moisture – Croit Bheinn (right) and the Beinn Odhar hills from Druim Fiaclach (Walk 23)
There’s a hoary old cliché that winter hillwalking is actually a branch of mountaineering. In snow, scrambly summer ridge walks certainly become exciting mountaineering routes, genuine climbs with their own grading system (expressed in Roman numerals), for which climbing equipment and skills are essential. Non-climbers should avoid any of the walks in this book given a winter grade of I or II in the Seasonal notes section of the information box. On even the least craggy peaks walkers might encounter steep icy slopes, cornices and the lurking threat of avalanche (see Avalanches, below). Ploughing through deep snow is slow and tiring, and in such conditions big walks might stretch from day trips into rigorous overnighters. Skis or snowshoes sometimes prove handy to cover meaningful distances, and occasionally verge on essential in a really snowy spell. Even driving to your chosen route can become an adventure; check road conditions before departure, and consider investing in snow chains or winter tyres.
At its worst winter weather is ferocious, with any combination of crippling wind speeds, stinging hail and rain, blizzards, spindrift and thick mist reducing visibility to as little as a few metres. When there’s less margin for error navigation has to be that bit sharper, an ability that is only developed through repeated practice. Could you navigate confidently across a featureless snowy plateau in a white-out, with invisible cornices out there somewhere and darkness fast approaching? In the heaviest conditions even basic mobility on exposed ground may be reduced to a crawl, and it’s a struggle just to get off the hill. When the weather forecast is bad consider downgrading your ambitions; if it’s really horrendous, then the sofa might be a better place to be.
But all this extra effort brings proportionate rewards – and while winter’s lows are cavernous, the highs are correspondingly stratospheric. On any true adventure success must occasionally be in doubt; there are certainly few guarantees in the Scottish winter hills. Here we are thrown onto our own resources, and plans made in the comfort of the pub may have to be adapted on the hoof to suit the changing demands