The Munros
Unlike the Wainwrights my early Munro bagging wasn’t down to walking but climbing - my first Munro being Ben Nevis after climbing the Orion Face Direct winter route on its north face in 1981. Similarly I summited Stob Dearg on Buachaille Etive Mor after climbing Raven’s Gully in 1985, there’s numerous others in a similar vein.
Living south (furth?) of the border means that getting days in the Scottish hills isn’t as frequent as I’d like, plus not every trip north is done with an eye to Munro bagging.
Thus progress in visiting the 284 (or whatever the current total is) tops has been intermittent to say the least. As with the Wainwrights, I’ve not really had a “campaign” as such, bagging has been as much about grabbing one or two here and there. Consequently there are groups of hills where I’ve done four out of six or similar - at the time of writing I’ve done two out of the Fisherfield Five; I’ve done the western Fannaichs; about half of those in the Ben Alder area and so on. Just about the only “strategy” has been trying to visit those further north and west first.
The listing of tops is here. along with memories of tops in each section.
So what of the days so far?
In 1989 I did the Aonach Eagach ridge in Glen Coe with Luke Steer. It was winter but not really conditions for climbing so we got dropped off at the top of the glen and wandered up into the cloud which turned out to be just a thin band. This meant that we were in bright low angle sunshine and to our north we had a Brocken Spectre (with glory) accompany us all the way along the ridge.
Compared to the Lakes there haven’t really been many “big days”, though even the supposedly “short” routes tend to be pretty big. One was helping out on a Ramsay Round in the Mamores which saw me visit those tops with the exceptions of the two outliers that form part of The Ring of Steall. At least I’ve one of the classic Scottish walks to look forward to in finishing that group off.