Munro Bagging
I've always had a love for mountains as I grew up in the heart of the Mourne mountains in Northern Ireland, but I'll write more about them in another post. For this post however, I'll focus on the fact that I've lived in Scotland for over six years now and decided that 2021 was the year that I finally started Munro Bagging.
What is a Munro?
Munros are mountains in Scotland over 3,000 ft (914.4m). They are named after Sir Hugo Munro, a founding member of the Scottish Mountaineering Club who published the list of mountains meeting this criteria in 1981.
There are 282 munros in total.
Why do you want to bag them?
Munro bagging is a common pastime for walking/ mountain enthusiasts where you challenge yourself to climb to the peak of all the highest mountains in Scotland. My friend bought me a wallchart and accompanying book full of maps of each Munro as we started this journey at the beginning of June. These have been great for planning hikes, tracking which Munros we've climbed and when.
When I tried explaining this to a colleague he mentioned it was like catching Pokémon and he's not wrong. Gotta bag 'em all!
Routes and Planning
A lot of planning goes into each of the hikes: making sure we have the right gear to keep ourselves safe and warm, figuring out if the Munro(s) are dog friendly (and if not, can I find someone to look after them while we're gone?), researching the route, downloading maps and planning out snacks.
Walk Highlands is by far the best resource we have found for the routes, they come complete with ratings, starting points, route maps and photo descriptions to help along your way. My one nitpick is that it refreshes while you're out, and if you don't have signal you will lose the maps (not making that mistake again).
We've also made the mistake once so far in being underprepared with food and snacks, having a sandwich and packet of sweets between us before getting stuck in standstill traffic for 6 hours on our way home. Thankfully a kind stranger shared a multi-pack of crisps with us so we wouldn't go hungry.
Progress so far
At the time of writing we've successfully bagged 11 / 282 Munros.
| Number | Munro(s) | Date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ben Vorlich (Loch Lomond) | 12 Jun 2021 |
| 2 | Ben Lomond | 19 Jun 2021 |
| 3 & 4 | Ben More & Stob Binnein | 3 Jul 2021 |
| 5 & 6 | Beinn Ime & Beinn Narnain | 25 Jul 2021 |
| 7 & 8 | Beinn Ghlas & Ben Lawers | 28 Aug 2021 |
| 9 & 10 | Cruach Àrdrain and Beinn Tulaichean | 5 Sep 2021 |
| 11 | Ben Chonzie | 11 Sep 2021 |
I'm hoping if I look back on this post in a year or so that I can say "aww remember when we started Munro bagging"
This is what Lewis looks like roughly five minutes into every hike:
