One of the advantages of this, of course, is
that there would be no need to scrabble up the
technically demanding Inaccessible Pinnacle to
gain a ‘compleation’. here are currently some 6,500
registered Munroists: I wonder how many more there
would be if an ascent of the In Pinn was not regarded
as necessary to complete a round?
he original list featured 24 summits which are
no longer classiied as Munros; some are now Munro
Tops, some have disappeared from the lists altogether,
while others measured as the wrong summit have
now been allocated to the correct point. Beinn an
Lochain, that graceful Corbett in the Arrochar Alps,
survived until the 1981 revision despite its height of
2957t being quite a bit short of Munro requirements.
And then there’s Carn Cloich-mhuillinn, the
Cairngorms summit Sir Hugh had planned to inish
his Munros on. hat lends a certain poignancy to
this peak, so it seems particularly cruel that it was
eventually deemed to be a Top ater surviving as a
Munro for 90 years.
Not to be missed
For Munroists who haven’t done all the Tops,
there are a few treasures to be discovered. Sgurr na
Lapaich, out on the end of the Mam Sodhail ridge in
Glen Afric, is a mountain which has been mooted
as a contender to regain full Munro status for a long
time since losing it in 1921, while Creag an Leth-
choin (Lurcher’s Crag), a distant yet prominent Top
of Cairn Gorm, will be a welcome diversion.
Among the 19 Munros on the current list omitted
irst time round were three in Skye’s Black Cuillin,
so no need for the new purists to climb Am Basteir,
Sgurr Mhic Choinnich or Sgurr a’ Mhadaidh. Also
missing were the Fisherield pair Beinn Tarsuinn and
Ruadh Stac Mor, although they never gained Munro
status until the revisions of 1953 and 1974 respectively
as this area had proven a notorious blank spot for map
makers for years due to access problems.
he last major revision in 1997, which promoted
eight summits to Munro status, taking the total to
284 (the highest ever) caused a bit of a stir. hese
elevations were all on the big ridges, such as Beinn
Eighe and Beinn Alligin in Torridon, Buachaille Etive
Mor and Beag and Bidean nam Bian in Glen Coe,
the Five Sisters in Kintail, An Stuc in the Ben Lawers
range, and Sgor an Lochain Uaine – he Angel’s Peak
- in the Cairngorms, and their promotion was seen by
the more cynical as an opportunity by the powers-
that-be to sell more updated guidebooks.
On the other hand, it served as a lesson to anyone
who had been foolish enough to have ignored these
summits during any ascent, just because they didn’t
have the Munro seal of approval at the time.
To say that the Munros list is a moveable feast
would be something of an understatement. here
are many mountains which have seen their status
swap back and forth with the regularity of a change
of underwear. An Gearanach in the Mamores was
deemed a Munro, then a Top, then later a Munro
again. he same happened with the aforementioned
Sgor an Lochain Uaine, although it remained out in
The Munros
the cold from 1921 until the 1997 revision.
Some ranges that had been over-endowed with
Munros, such as the Ben Avon massif and the
Newtonmore hills, have had them stripped down over
the years. Glen Feshie also had an abundance, hence
the aforementioned Sgor Gaoith incident.
he case of Ben Lui is a supreme example of
unnecessary tinkering. In the 1974 revision, it was
decided to designate the North-West Top – which
hadn’t even been mentioned in any previous list – as
the true summit. he next set of changes saw that
decision correctly overturned and the North-West
Top only lasted a short time as a Munro Top before
being struck of again.
It’s been more than 20 years since the last
concerted revision, although the Munro tally has
dropped to 282 in that time, with new surveys leading
to two mountains being re-classiied as Corbetts- Sgurr nan Ceannaichean in 2009 and Beinn a’
Chlaidheimh in 2012. hese surveys were driven by
he Munro Society, a group set up in 2002 open to
anyone who has ‘compleated’ the Munros – and were
initially undertaken to determine whether any of the
higher Corbetts could actually be of Munro height.
he project was eventually expanded to include
all peaks around the magic 3,000t mark and
stretched over eight years. Every so oten, there were
rumours that that mighty slab of crumbling rock
in the far north, Foinaven, was actually of Munro
height, but when it was inally checked it proved to
be slightly lower than originally thought. In fact, no
‘new’ Munros were found during these heightings,
but satellite measurements showed that Sgurr nan
Ceannaichean and Beinn a’ Chlaidheimh were under
the plimsol line and they were re-assigned to the
Corbett clan.
A warning, though. A friend once told me that
she had been converted to hillwalking by her then
partner. She was happy to spend her weekends
tramping the hills in her search for true love, but it
all ended in tears when he became obsessed with
ticking everything in sight, including all the deleted
Tops. his was a step too far for her, and during a
long trek in the Monadhliath the relationship came
to an abrupt halt. It seems that while love may be said
to conquer all, it couldn’t quite conquer the deleted
Munro Tops.
hat these iconic mountains still continue to
fascinate us, more than 100 years ater the conception
of the Tables, would likely have surprised and yet
delighted Sir Hugh Munro. he exhibition is a itting
tribute to the man regarded as the Father of Scottish
hillwalking and his enduring legacy.
[right] An Gearanach in the Mamores
[below right] Sgurr Dearg's Inaccessible Pinnacle is now
the most challenging summit on the Munros listPhotos: Alan Rowan60 The Great Outdoors Spring 2019