Bag your first Munro

by Mary Caperton Morton
Monday, November 3, 2014

Credit: Mary Caperton Morton.

One of the founding members of the Scottish Mountaineering Club, Hugh Munro, compiled a list of all the mountains in Scotland taller than 3,000 feet (914.4 meters), which are now called Munros. At present, there are 283, although this number has changed over time due to improvements in surveying and mapping. Munro-bagging is a national pastime in Scotland; for some dedicated Scots, summiting all the Munros is a lifelong project.

Scotland’s Munros range from easy strolls to epic climbs. A good place to start ticking off your own Munro list is the Glenshee Ski Center near Ballater, where you can summit, or “bag,” two Munros, Cairnwell and Carn Aosda, in a moderate 5-kilometer round-trip hike. Cairngorm Mountain, for which the range is named, is also relatively accessible via a 6.5-kilometer round-trip trail from the Cairngorm Ski Center, near Aviemore.


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