Climbing Scotland's Munros

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Outside Magazine, April 2005

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Scotland
The High Hills of Freedom (cont.)


	Baggers's Banquet: Glen Coe's Buachaille Etive Mór (William Huber)

LIKE A LOT OF GREAT Scottish traditions—haggis, the bagpipes, the Loch Ness monster—Munro bagging is both silly and serious business. Silly because, well, who really cares how many Scottish mountains you've climbed—none of them are particularly big. And serious because, in Scotland, a lot of people actually do care.

"Many of us in this world are interested in systems, categories, and using lists to organize our lives," says Dave Hewitt, editor of a hill-walking fanzine called The Angry Corrie, which scrupulously tracks the bagging of not only Munros but also Scottish Corbetts (hills of between 2,500 and 3,000 feet) and Grahams (hills of 2,000 to 2,500 feet), among others. "You can call it obsessive or whatever, but the lists provide a motivation and a framework for getting out, and what's wrong with that?"

Hewitt wouldn't have gotten an argument from Sir Hugh Munro, a gentleman adventurer who, in 1891, made a fateful contribution to the Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal: "Tables giving all the Scottish Mountains exceeding 3,000 feet in height." The 35-year-old had already climbed many of the features on his list—283 peaks (a figure since amended to 284) and 255 subsidiary tops (now 227)—and was intent on scaling them all. But he was beaten to the punch by another Scot, the Reverend A. E. Robertson, who after a campaign of more than ten years claimed his last Munro, Meall Dearg, in 1901.

Munro himself never quite got there, dying in 1919 with two Munros unclimbed. But over the next 60 years, about 40 others did, proudly taking their place on the Mountaineering Club's official list of "compleaters." Then, in 1974, an outdoor educator named Hamish Brown reeled off a 112-day, self-propelled "continuous round" of the Munros. His book Hamish's Mountain Walk became a bestseller in Scotland and, coincidentally or not, was followed by a huge upsurge in the popularity of Munro bagging—one that has yet to crest.

If you go to the Scottish Mountaineering Club's Web site today, you'll find more than 3,300 registered compleaters, a large number of them English and Dutch, along with a smattering of Americans. For many, the Munros are primarily a competitive challenge—one that can become extreme. Take Charlie Campbell, a part-time postman from Glasgow who, in the summer of 2000, ran, biked, and swam his way up the 284 Munros in the phenomenal time of 48 days and 12 hours. (The swimming came in handy for the sea crossings to the isles of Mull and Skye.) Or Edinburgh's Steven Fallon, a computer programmer for the National Health Service who has completed an astonishing 12 rounds of the Munros at the tender age of 35.

But there's another, often overlooked aspect of Munro bagging that, for me, is just as appealing: the idea that roaming around in the hills can be a political act. As in England, where "rambling" developed a keen following among the working class, the roots of Munro bagging—and for that matter, all Scottish climbing—go back to the Industrial Revolution and the nostalgia of Glasgow factory workers for the crags and campfires of their youth. Despite (or perhaps because of) the country's feudal past—even today, just 350 people hold title to half the private land—the average Scot considers it his right to walk anywhere he pleases. "There's still a heavy residue of that socialist instinct, and thankfully so," Hewitt points out. "A lot of people here go out walking to express their freedom, the idea that the hills are ours."

Scotland's hills aren't entirely mine, but I do have a small claim on them: Two hundred and fifty years ago, one of my forefathers, a devout Presbyterian named Walter Buchanan, emigrated from Stirlingshire to Pennsylvania. Though my family has always honored that heritage via the usual means—tartan boxer shorts and bathrobes and, of course, single-malt whisky—none of us ever got around to actually visiting the place. Then, 12 years ago, my sister met a Scottish strawberry farmer at a wedding in San Francisco—and married him.

The Scottish mountains surprised me the first time I saw them. They were bigger and more beautiful than I had expected, and something in their majestic contours—perhaps their soft cloaks of green—seemed to invite the casual climber onto their heights. Nor did there seem to be any incentive not to go: no signs, no fences. According to my brother-in-law, there was no such thing as criminal trespassing in Scotland.

A year later, my sister sent me a guide to the Munros for Christmas. Most were walk-ups, but a select few involved scrambling or tricky traverses, and one, the Isle of Skye's Sgurr Dearg—also known as "the Inaccessible Pinnacle"—required a bit more. The "east ridge is narrow and remarkably exposed, with vertical drops on both sides and a disconcerting lack of really good handholds," the guide reported. "If there is a wind blowing, the situation may seem to be precarious." As I read on, a vague idea began to take shape. How many Munros could an inspired visitor climb in a week? If I were to start at my sister and brother-in-law's farm, near Edinburgh, could I make it all the way to Skye? Would the notoriously fickle weather allow me a shot at Sgurr Dearg—and if so, could I handle it?

A Munro-bagging holiday doesn't require much planning. I already had the guidebook and a pair of boots. I could have packed some camping gear, too—in Scotland you can pretty much camp anywhere. But why bivy in the rain if you could plunk down 20 pounds at one of the country's ubiquitous B&Bs, take a good soak in a seven-foot bathtub, and load up on eggs and blood sausage in the morning? At the last minute I threw in a compass, for form's sake, and I was ready to go.

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