Waypoints on the Road to the Munros

by Dave Seaman

On 13 April 2023 I climbed Carn Dearg in the Monadleith near Newtonmore, thus “compleating” my round of the 282 Munros and a journey which had covered countless miles travelling to and from, and zig-zagging around, the Scottish Highlands, a journey which took almost 56 years.

Every journey has waypoints, the first of which must always be the start but, like many other compleators, I wasn’t aware when I walked up Cairngorm with my girlfriend in August 1967 that I was taking the first steps on a journey that would in time become a significant part of my life, or even that the mountain I was on was a Munro at all. Not that I was totally unaware of Munros. I remember, as a boy, reading about them in the Scotsman newspaper and trying in vain to find them on the map!

In the following year, I acquired my first car and we toured around the Highlands, going wherever the fancy took us. Our random wanderings took us to Ben Nevis and to Sgurr na Banachdich on the Cuillin ridge of Skye and gave me an insight into what the Highlands had to offer. Marriage, children and work got in the way and it was a full 21 years before we returned for family holidays in Pitlochry and Aviemore so, in August 1989, I wandered up Ben Lawers and its neighbour Beinn Ghlas and, two days later, with my wife and teenage daughters on a beautiful sunny morning, Schielhallion. On another trip in 1991, I climbed five more Munros, making a grand total of 11 in 24 years! There followed another break in my accidental ticking off the Munros during which I was divorced and found another partner, now my wife, Ruth. In 1996 I took her on her first visit to the Highlands and it was a disaster. Apart from one lovely day walking around Ben Ime, the weather was terrible. We stayed several days in one of the hotels on the approach to Fort William and never saw the other side of Loch Linnhe. On 28 May I climbed Carn Mor Dearg and crossed to Ben Nevis by the arête in a high wind but Ruth swore that she would never go to the Highlands again and, apart from joining the party for my final Munro, she kept her word.

I wasn’t going to be kept away from the Highlands, which I had grown to love, as easily as that and, saying that I would “bag a few Munros”, bought myself a small tent and headed back north. A significant waypoint on my road to compleating but with still no clear aim, or hope, of ever reaching that destination. For the next three years I made the journey north in May and again in late summer and, by the end of 2000, my score was 64 including quite a few of the Cuillin peaks and the two Munros of the Aonach Eagach ridge, some of the most challenging scrambles that you might attempt without a rope. It was early in this period that I bought a copy of the Harveys Munro chart and, ignoring Ruth’s derision, began filling in the little triangles on the map in red ink as I ticked them off. This served me well as a record of my progress for many years but eventually, as it fell apart at the folds, it was replaced by a spreadsheet.

My approach in those years was again quite random, climbing a few hills in one location and moving on somewhere else for the next day. For example, on my first sortie in 1996, I camped at Strathyre for one night and the next morning struck camp, climbed Ben Vorlich and Stuc a’Chroin south of Loch Earn, and then drove on to camp in Glen Nevis where I had one of the most memorable and strenuous day’s walking of my life, taking in five tops in the “Ring of Steall” in the Mamores. In August 1999, with my friend Algy, I climbed Sgurr nan Gillean at the northern end of the Cuillin Ridge but then, in failing light, encountered a seemingly impassable obstacle on the ridge of Am Basteir and had to leave that for another day. The next day saw two more Cuillin Munros ticked off and Banachdich revisited but, on the third day, in considerably worse weather, we found ourselves on a short precipitous ridge leading to Sgurr Dubh Mor with an obstacle at the end of it which we couldn’t overcome without putting ourselves at significant risk. Again we retreated and the memory of that ridge haunted me until I tried again and found the easier approach 22 years later.

2001 brought foot and mouth disease and another waymark on my journey. Ruth and I had been taking walking holidays in the Austrian and Bavarian Alps for a number of years and so, with a trip to Scotland out of the question, I took myself off to Austria and attempted the Stubaier Höhenweg, hut-to-hut. It was too late in the year and the attempt had to be abandoned but it gave me a new direction. I joined the AAC(UK) and an annual hut-to-hut trip became the norm. I only made it to Scotland five times in the next nine years and at the beginning of 2010 my score was still only 91, but so what? After all I had no aspiration to do them all.

2010 brought another waymark as I joined the AAC(UK) spring meet organised by Tish Woulds in Braemar, and was drawn by the companionship and camaraderie that I found there. In the following nine years I benefited from the experience and encouragement of my newfound friends and did things on tricky ridges in winter conditions which I would never have dared to attempt by myself. I passed my 70th birthday in this period and often said that I would never compleat the Munros in my lifetime, but this was pooh-poohed by my AAC(UK) friends and a major obstacle was removed when Paul Marginson organised a guide to take him, Robyn Huggins and me up the Inaccessible Pinnacle in May 2017. It was still only number 185 on my list but I was beginning to think that compleation might just be possible.

Paul’s Milehouse meet in March 2020 was scarcely over before Covid closed things down but at the end of it I only had 51 to go and in October restrictions were sufficiently relaxed to allow me to rent a chalet at Spean Bridge to spend a week in self-catering isolation and pick off all the Munros around Loch Quoich. Two more trips in 2021 and one in 2022 took me to the most northerly Munro, Ben Hope, and even more inaccessible mountains such as those on the Knoydart peninsular, in Fisherfield and at the head of Glen Affric. By May 2022 I was down to two and planned to do my final one in April 2023 so that Tish could join me on her way to her meet at Ullapool that month. Tish was there but unable to walk up Carn Dearg because of a recent operation on her leg, but I was accompanied by Paul and another old AAC(UK) friend, Jim Dixon and, to my great surprise and delight, my daughters, three grandchildren and one son-in-law! The weather conditions were quite wintery but benign and, just as I poured the Talisker on the summit, huge flakes of snow began to float down through the almost windless air.

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