faster. Where once you had to wait until morning for a ferryman to arrive and take one or two cars across at a time, now there is a bridge. There are also more people walking the hills; routes are well established and danger points better understood. A good safety net is also provided by mountain rescue teams across the country in the event of things going wrong. Route-finding is also much easier than it used to be, with a network of paths on most of the major hills where thousands of others have gone before. But – and it is a big but – climbing the Munros is still an adventure; one that will grip you and give you a fund of memories to last a lifetime. And when the weather turns bad there is just the same need as ever there was for sound judgement, fortitude and navigational skill to bring you safely home.
The qualities required of the Munroist are not technically or even physically as demanding as those, say, of the rock climber or the high-altitude mountaineer (unless the routes are being done in winter conditions, in which case they can become a serious and arduous mountaineering undertaking). But a certain doggedness is nevertheless needed – the perseverance to see through a huge task – plus the skill and courage to navigate in conditions that can change all too rapidly in the Scottish hills. And this is not to mention a willingness to get wet, cold, shrouded in mist and buffeted by storms. If you only venture out when the sun is shining on the tops it may take more than one lifetime to complete the round.
Some people may deride those who are working through the Munros, as if the act of ticking them off a list somehow corrupts an otherwise pure experience of mountaineering. In my experience the opposite is true. By accepting the challenge of doing them all you open yourself up to a host of new experiences, and you find yourself in a variety of mountain situations that you might never have otherwise experienced. Besides this, of the many accomplished and aspiring Munroists I know, I can think of none who confine their hillwalking just to the peaks that are on the list. I know of none who have not felt enriched by trying to complete the round.
Stob Coire nam Beith from Glen Coe (Route 32)
The Munros
What exactly are the Munros? I don’t propose here to retell the history of this select group of hills. Suffice to say that Sir Hugh Munro’s great idea of climbing all the 3000ft mountains in Scotland has for over a century captured the imagination of everyone who loves mountains. In the popular imagination the Round of Munros includes all the hills that are over 3000ft in height. Once you start climbing them, however, you quickly realize that this is not the whole story. There are many points where the land rises above 3000ft but is not regarded as a separate hill; or where it clearly is a separate hill, but it has still not been accorded the status of a Munro.
Sir Hugh’s original list, drawn up in 1891, was rather different from the most recently updated version. Some revisions have taken place as a result of improvements in mapping. Sir Hugh, for example, rather conveniently believed that the Inaccessible Pinnacle was lower than Sgurr Dearg and so it was not originally listed as a Munro. Even today the latest satellite mapping techniques may reveal that the accepted heights of hills is wrong (usually only by the odd metre). The Munro summit of Ben a’ Chroin had to be redefined a couple of years ago because what was previously thought to be a lower Top nearly 1km away was found to be 1m higher than the classified summit. Similarly the respective heights of Beinn a’ Chaorainn’s three summits have recently been revised, and Ben Nevis itself is now officially 1m lower than it was a few years ago.
Successive revisions of the list by the Great and the Good have sought to declassify some hills and upgrade others, not just because their respective heights have been reassessed but also on the basis of their ‘character’ or ‘remoteness’, or whether it was felt that readers ought to be directed to one rather than another. There is not always an obvious logic to the hills that are in or out of the list at any moment in time, and the list has been revised so often that it is in some danger of being discredited. The last revision came in 2012 when Beinn a' Chlaidheimh was remeasured and deemed to fall just below the required height. On the current list there are 282 Munros and 227 Tops.
Despite all the argument and lack of clarity about what makes a hill a Munro, and despite the all-too-frequent revisions, there is no doubting the fact that the underlying idea of the list makes sense to most people; it always has made sense and it probably always will. The list stands for something meaningful both to the hillwalker and to the public at large, and that something involves the idea that the Munros are all the highest hills in Scotland.
Using the Guide
This guide is published in two volumes: volume one covering the southern Munros and volume two the northern peaks. In general the routes in volume one are listed from west to east and from north to south. Ben Nevis and Carn Mor Dearg, in the far northwest of the area covered by this volume, therefore make up Route 1, followed by the Munros that extend eastwards along the Spean Valley. The Arrochar Alps and Ben Lomond, being the most southerly Munros, are listed last.
The routes described are often the most popular ones for each hill; usually these are also the most direct and obvious ways up. Like most walkers I have a preference for circuits rather than returning by the route of ascent, and these have been given where appropriate. Some alternatives to the described route are indicated. There may be ‘better’ ways up some of the hills, but the distances involved in reaching them can be a strong disincentive to their use.
Near the top of the Lancet Edge on Sgor lutharn (Geal Charn) (Route 15)
Some Munros are isolated and have to be climbed on their own, but most Munros fall naturally into distinct pairs or small groups. Sometimes, however, this natural grouping of hills can make for a very long route if done in one outing. Usually these longer routes, such as the Lochnagar circuit or the Ben Lui hills, can be broken down into shorter walks if required, and whilst several long routes are described here in full, suggestions are made (where appropriate) about how to tackle them in a number of shorter outings if preferred.
Each route is prefaced by a box containing information to help you in planning your ascents.
Mountain Names and Pronunciations
All the mountain names have been taken in the form that they appear on the current 1:50,000 OS maps, although it is clear that there could be alternative spellings for many of them. Spellings on the maps sometimes appear in their Gaelic form, for example ‘bheinn’ and ‘mhor’, and sometimes in anglicized versions of Gaelic words, such as ‘ben’ and ‘more’. For the sake of consistency I have kept faithful to the OS spellings, even where these appear to be wrong.
Suggested meanings and pronunciations have been given at the start of each route for the names of all the peaks, drawing on a variety of sources. The origin of mountain names is often complex and sometimes obscure. Whilst the majority of Scottish mountain names are of Gaelic origin, some owe more to Norse, Pictish, Scots or English influence. Some names may contain elements of more than one language – Bla Bheinn on Skye, for example, is often held to derive from ‘bla’, a Norse word meaning ‘blue’, and ‘bheinn’, the Gaelic word for mountain, although there are others who feel that Bla comes from the Gaelic ‘blath’, meaning ‘flowers’. Many Munro names have more than one possible derivation.
Pronunciations, too, are far from fixed and certain, and it would be wrong to be too dogmatic about them. I have tried to give a simple phonetic rendition of each pronunciation so that a modern English speaker can readily understand it. But this is not a simple task: many of the names may have Gaelic roots, but over time they have been corrupted into words that are no longer recognisably Gaelic. Ben Chonzie, for example, may have its origin in the Gaelic word ‘còineach’, meaning moss, but there is no letter z in the Gaelic
