A short video I made with Heather Morning of the Mountaineering Council of Scotland in which she describes Scotland’s mountain accident black spots. Heather works as Safety Advisor to the MCofS and is an experienced member of the Cairn Gorm Mountain Rescue Team.scotlands-black-spots

 

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The Sligachan electricity poles that have been the bane of photographers’ lives are gone.
For some 56 years the poles, that carried electrical cables across Skye, have frustrated landscape photographers trying to get that iconic image of the Cuillin. Yesterday, a team from Scottish Southern Electricity cut them down, having spent some months undertgrounding the cables. It was part of a project being undertaken by Scottish Southern to help ‘improve the views’ across Scotland. Other such schemes are taking place between Kingshouse and the devil’s Staircase on the West Highland Way and in upper Glen Feshie in the Cairngorms.

The removal of the poles is also part of a bigger local project. A community group from Sconser are trying to raise £400,000 to create a sculpture of Prof Norman Collie and John Mackenzie, the pioneering mountaineers, one a Victorian scientist and the other a local crofter, who first mapped the Cuillin and whose names are commemorated in two Cuillin summits. The appeal has now been launched and you can find more details at www.skyesculpture.com
The group have come up with an idea to help finance the project, which is unusual, if not unique. A scheme has been launched giving everyone the opportunity to get involved and donate a certain weight of bronze, to go towards building the sculpture. It works out about £1 per gram.

Certificates will be numbered, signed and dated, and bronze may be donated personally, or on behalf of a friend or relative, whose name will be handwritten on the certificate. This will be a chance for everyone to participate in a piece of history in the making on the Isle of Skye, and have it recorded for posterity.

One interesting point I put to the Scottish and Southern engineers was this. If the company is so keen to take down poles to improve the scenery of the highlands, what was it doing about the hundreds of wind turbines it owns? They were very nice people, and I felt bad about putting the question to them -they obviously had to give the company line answer about global warming, etc. etc

The Munro Society held their press conference today to give the survey results of the four mountains they have been measuring this summer.

The results are as follows:

Beinn Teallach (NN361849) north of Loch Moy. 914.60m. The NE summit is apparently 0.5m higher than the SW summit, the one with the cairn.

Ben Vane (NN277098) north-east of Loch Lomond. 915.76m. Apparently a rock outcrop on the summit plateau is higher than the cairn.

Sgurr a’ Choire-Bheithe (NG895015) in the Rough Bounds of Knoydart. 913.32m. Obviously doesn’t quite make it to Munro height so retains its Corbett status.

Sgurr nan Ceannaichean (NH087480) south-east of Glen Carron. 913.43m. Was previously 915m so has now been demoted to Corbett status. The SE corner of the plateau area is 0.91m higher than the base of the main cairn.

The work was carried out by John Barnard and Graham Jackson of the Munro Society, along with Myrddyn Phillips. Their competence and accuracy have been recognised by the Ordnance Survey and the Scottish Mountaineering Club. The changes will feature in the next publication of OS maps and SMC Munros and Cortbetts guidebooks.

I must confess I’m a little disappointed that Sgurr nan Ceannaichean has been demoted as it’s a much finer hill than its near neighbour Moruisg, which remains a Munro. However, I guess most hillwalkers will want to climb the two hills together making it a classic Munro/Corbett combination. At the same time I’m relieved that Sgurr a’ Choire-bheithe has avoided promotion to Munro status. It’s a wild, lonely hill protected by long miles, very rough terrain and often difficult river crossings.

Iain Robertson of the Munro Society said they have a large number of other hills in their in-tray awaiting re-survey but that will have to wait until they raise the funds to do the work.

I’m delighted to say we’ve taken delivery of our new book The Sutherland Trail - A journey through north-west Scotland.

After eighteen months or so of hard work it’s great to get the book in our hands and we’re both delighted with it. However, it doesn’t really matter how much Richard Else and I like it, it’s you, the readers, who count.

It’s being distributed through Cordee and is available in Amazon, Borders and Waterstones. Also available from this website (see Shop), price £20, plus p&p. And a personal thanks to my old friend and colleague Richard Else who not only produces great television programmes but takes a neat photograph. It’s his images that grace the book.

Walk Magazine, the quarterly glossy from The Ramblers, popped through my letterbox the other day and I picked it up, anxious to read what Tom Franklin, The Ramblers’ CEO, had said about the financial constraints that led to the draconian cuts in the Welsh and Scottish operations.

You can imagine how surprised I was when I realised that the subject hasn’t been mentioned at all? It’s curious because I know of a number of people who said they had written letters of objection to the magazine, but nothing has appeared - it’s as though life continues merrily in the Metropolitan bubble that is The London Ramblers. I guess the magazine editor, Dominic Bates, who’s a good bloke, has been gagged by management.

In Franklin’s own column he twitters on about walking through fields of cows and how nice it is to see “these beautiful animals close up.” Pretty banal stuff and what a lost opportunity at a time when the organisation he is supposedly running is on the verge of being broken up. I can tell him of at least half a dozen issues here in Scotland that the old Ramblers Scotland team would have been addressing if he had allowed it to stay intact. As it is Scottish director Dave Morris, the sole employee of the Ramblers in Scotland, is up to his eyes in admin work and doesn’t have the time to campaign effectively.

I think this is another example of the way Franklin and his Board want to keep the membership in the dark and I find it astonishing that at such a time of financial crisis, apparently, in The Ramblers that the management don’t use the organisation’s magazine to inform members of what’s going on. But perhaps that’s part of the same management ploy that doesn’t reply to members’ emails and letters about the financial cuts. I think it’s called the mushroom method of management - keep them in the dark and heap shit on them from time to time.

Looks like we are about to see some changes to the Munros list.

The Munro Society is holidng a press conference next week (Sept 10) and, according to very reliable sources, there will be several changes to the status of some hills. Without giving the game away, and the Munro Society works very hard on these issues so I don’t want to steal their thunder, there could be a couple of surprising changes, including one promotion that will test the resolve of many Munro-baggers.

I’m not going to tell you any more but some of you might be pleased to know that the number of Munros will be on a downward trend. And apparently the Ordnance Survey has ratified all the changes. All will be revealed next week…