“Hell of a Journey”

Last year I wrote a blog about TRAIL magazine’s list of 1000 metre peaks in the British Isles and the accompanying article about Mike Cawthorne’s winter traverse of the Scottish 1000 metre peaks.  Mike’s book, “Hell of a Journey” quoted that this walk took in 135 such summits, but he didn’t specifically list them.

I managed to buy a copy of his Boardman Tasker award shortlisted book and as I read it I came to the conclusion that this is as good as any mountaineering book that I have previously read.  The title describes the Mike’s endeavour perfectly and I can thoroughly recommend it, particularly to Munro-baggers, winter-walkers, wild-campers and mountaineers.

But back to the list.

There are 137 Munros that are 1000 meters or higher and I wondered where the other two had gone.

Mike started his walk in November 1997 and the most recent edition of Munro’s tables was published in 1997 which implies that two are missing.  But Sgurr Breac in the Fannichs was the clue as it was detailed in Mike’s text as one of his 135 summits with a height of exactly 1000 metres.  But in the 1997 tables it is listed with a height of 999 metres!

This got me thinking – when was it likely that Mike planned his walk?  I came to the conclusion that he used the 1990 edition of the tables, before the 1997 edition was published.  Would the numbers now tally?

The 1997 update to the tables was a significant one with quite a four “new” 1000 metre summits being classified as Munros and one 1000 metre summit being demoted to a Top.  Some research confirmed that Sgurr Breac was listed in 1990’s tables with a height of 1000 metres; the 1997 update had demoted its height to 999 metres.  All of which explains the number of summits increasing from 135 to 137.

So clarity has resulted – Mike’s round was of the 1000 metre Munros (known as Metros in some hillbagging circles) as listed in the 1990 edition of Munros tables.