UKC

I'm talking about pre-Munro days here. Does anyone know when the last unclimbed 3000ft peak in Scotland received its first ascent? I know the history of first ascents wasn't recorded as well in Scotland as it was in the Alps, but was it 1860s? 1870s? Perhaps even earlier or later?

Any info gratefully received...

In reply to Only a hill:
As no one knew how many 3000 footers there were before Munro began his list, probably most of the summits that appeared of secondary importance to the dominant ones in any landscape were left alone by the literary set.
Furthermore, the notion of measuring from sea level is a relatively recent phenomenon, which even in Munro's day was inexact and incomplete.

Of course this didn't mean that some of the 'lesser' 3000's hadn't been climbed- setting out boundaries/ stalking etc my have led to their ascent- just that the first ascent went unrecorded.

It also depends on your definition of a peak and that debate on deleted/new munro tops continues to this day.
In my own back yard we had the 14 peaks of Snowdonia brought to the public imagination by Thomas Fairbanks. Now, in the era of 'bigging up' any mildly demanding walk, we have 15 (or, as some assert even 16) peaks.

In reply to llechwedd:
Never read it but there's a book by Ian Mitchell- 'Scotland's Mountains before the mountaineers' which might help.

In reply to Only a hill: I'm pretty sure all the hills of Scotland will have been climbed through stalking/farming/whatever. When you hear about how easily and readily the folk that work the land cover ground I find it easy to imagine that all the 3000 footers outwith the Cuillin would have been climbed at some point.

On my walk this summer I met a farmer in a pub in Killin. He was now in his 70s and wasn't doing it anymore, but he recounted climbed Sgiath Chuil seven times in one day, rounding up sheep on Ben More without a second thought, having worked every hill farm on the present-day West Highland Way.

In Isolation Shepard, the guys working pre-enlarged Loch Monar, were covering upwards of 35 miles a day in a fell running style, going up to the summits collecting animals. And they're but modern standards remote hills.

I'm not sure if I'm answering your question, or if you're looking for something more subtle, but you'll be looking in the Cuillin. I think there's a strong possibility every walkable mountain will have been done a very long time ago in some unrecorded way.

In reply to Only a hill: by modern standards*

In reply to Only a hill:

I always assumed that every mountain in Briatin would have been climbed thousands of years ago. But I'm not too sure anymore, how many local Welsh people in Llanberis ever go up into the mountains? Maybe some adventerous people scrambled up Tryfan in the stone age but we'll never know I suppose.

In reply to Red Rover:
Around the Carneddau there's plenty of evidence for sustained management of the land over thousands of years, including the ruined cairn on Carnedd Llywelyn at 1000M+. Nowadays I'd hazard a guess that the majority of the population of Bethesda have never been up there though.

Overall, I'd guess that, apart from some cave systems, extensive bog or areas requiring 'climbing skills', probably every square foot of Britain has been tramped at one time or another.
I'd go with Kevin's suggestion.

In reply to kwoods:

I think that's right - many of the remoter hills (by today's standards) would have had communities living fairly near them in summer at least, when transhumance was still practiced in the Highlands (note the prevalence of the term for 'shieling' - airigh - on modern OS maps).

Outside Skye, I'd assume they've all been climbed - though we can never possibly know.

In reply to Only a hill: According to 'Scotland's Mountains Before the Mountaineers' it's Sgurr Dubh Mor in 1874

In reply to nastyned:

With (perhaps) the last first ascent of a British peak ( albeit sub 3000')
also on the Skye Cuillin 2 decades later (pargraph 7)
http://www.smc.org.uk/Gallery/SMC%20Pioneers/JNC.php

In reply to Only a hill: If you look at the An Teallach chapter in The Big Walks by Richard Gilbert and Ken Wilson it talks about the first exploration of An Teallach, but I can't remember any more details and my copy is not at my house.

In reply to kwoods:

A local in Cannich told me there is a lot of poetic licence in Isolation Shepherd. I remember reading a section of the book where he was describing how 'hillmen' walked a different way, covering more ground while using less energy than mere 'hillwalkers'. Given the style of the book - which I enjoyed - I took that with a pinch of salt.
I thought there was a hill/peak in Skye which was only climbed recently, ie in the last 10 years or so? A quick Google throws up Dun Dubh in 2003. I'd have thought all walkable hills would have been summitted and most of them by locals who left no record of their walk.

In reply to Only a hill:


I was once on a train from Corrour to the Fort with Robbie Campbell + dog, the shepherd from Luibeilt, who also got on at Corrour. We got talking before we boarded the train--it was quite a wait, and just the two of us waiting--and he told me that when the sheep-rounding was on he would climb hills like A Ghlas-Bheinn and Meall a'Bhainne, in the Rannoch wilderness, all the time, sometimes twice or more a day, in pursuit of strays.

He did all this in wellies, and he was very puzzled why walkers ever wore anything else. (I assume that means he didn't climb them in snow very often!)

Robbie is an example of how all sorts of hills must have got climbed, long before anyone thought of doing it for pleasure. (He said he enjoyed doing it, but he wouldn't do it if he didn't have sheep to catch, and he doubted he'd still be doing it at 60.)

The shepherds will have climbed every hill in Scotland that's a sheep-run. And the hunters will have climbed all the hills that are deer-forest. In both cases, long, long ago.

In reply to Red Rover:
>...Maybe some adventerous people scrambled up Tryfan in the stone age...

But what did they do on grit?

In reply to Only a hill:

I think probably at least 500 years before your date but no evidence other than the names and relating them to poetry, folklore, and stories.

If you are into ossianic poetry, gaelic and lordship of the isles you could work it out to the nearest 100 years I think.

Many hundreds of years before victorians think they did it.

In reply to drmarten: Would agree about poetic license - I actually know the sentence you mean because I was surprised at him being sniffy about the "slow plod of mountaineers". Still, I think the book points up a previous closeness to the mountains which was part of the culture, unlike our present-day situation of everyone crammed into cities and the hills deserted. Not being sniffy about that, just an observation.

The InnPinn was first done in 1880 and Sgurr Thearlaich in 1887.

In reply to kwoods:

It still is part of the culture but sniffy mountaineers think the hills are the preserve of gillet clad people.

It would make an interesting study to look at how much "mountaineers" actually know about the hills relative to the local population.

In reply to Only a hill: Isn't there a written record for the Inn Pinn by Slingsby or similar from around 1880? I can't imagine shepherds climbed that earlier or that many other hills were unclimbed at the time.

In reply to Saor Alba: Now that's sniffy about mountaineers.

Oh god we're tangled up in knots

In reply to MG:

http://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/info/History/CuillinPioneers

"In 1880 Willie Naismith, later to be the founder of the Scottish Mountaineering Club, made his first visit to Skye. He climbed the north peak of Bidein Druim nam Ramh. Later in the year, Charles and Lawrence Pilkington (of Pilkington Glass), two of the greatest climbers of their day, came to the island. They made the first ascent of the Inaccessible Pinnacle, watched by John MacKenzie, who returned to make the second ascent the following year after taking off his shoes. By 1886 Stocker and Parker had ascended the west side of the pinnacle."

In reply to kwoods:

What I mean is that we are talking about people here, not separate species. If you look at Gaelic poetry by the likes of Dun Bàn Macintyre and Iain MacFhionnlaidh nan Dàn you see that there are multiple references to being on the tops of hills from a long time ago.

In reply to Saor Alba:

Aye those weird Highlanders from a bygone era, I wondered if they were really human as well.

/irony

Weird statement to make, and I think you're making a few bold and incorrect assumptions about me - if you'd like to retract your post........ I was simply pointing out I was surprised at Iain Thomson's attitude to mountaineers.

In reply to drmarten:

A quick Google throws up Dun Dubh in 2003. I'd have thought all walkable hills would have been summitted and most of them by locals who left no record of their walk.

Back on topic; this is where I first read about Dun Dubh in 2003

In 2003 he climbed what he believed to be Britain's last unclimbed mountain, a rocky pinnacle called Dun Dubh – Gaelic for black fort – on the Quiraing mountains on the Isle of Skye. Lying two miles off the tourist path, the 1,000ft face took Dale an hour to ascend. "If you slipped, you would fall to the bottom," he reported afterwards. "It's quite precipitous. The rock is absolutely atrocious."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/sport-obituaries/8346303/Chris-D...

In reply to kwoods:

I'm not sure what your issue is and I haven't intended to make any statements about you. In fact did I at all?

youtube.com/watch?v=KQV_Z7ZxQU8&

Check out the above video which has Duncan Maclennan of Gleann Afraig talking about "hikers" also.

In reply to Saor Alba:

Don't know if you've been watching 'From Harris with Love' on BBC Alba but one of the characters, Alasdair MacDonald - he must be well into his 60s - was filmed at the top of The Clisham collecting sheep. Think he said it was the third time that year he'd been up there.

In reply to Only a hill:
Perhaps I ought to clarify: by "ascent" I mean "recorded ascent," be that by mountaineer, geographer, shepherd, forester, or any other individual.

I thought it was well established that most of the hills will have been walked over by people since antiquity, but since there can be no record of such activities we can only go by the available facts (which tend to start from the late 18th century).

I'm interested because one of the themes of my new book is the difference between the explorers (often scientists and geographers) who started to turn their attention to the Highlands in the early 19th century and the men and women who had worked the land since time immemorial and probably knew the mountains far better, although informally of course.

In reply to Only a hill: Well I guess a start would be that prince from 1745 - it's known he went over Sgurr an Utha, Sgurr nan Coireachan, Sgurr Thuilm, Monadh Gorm (not really an independent hill) over the Ciche-Gairich wall etc. Will have a think.

In reply to Only a hill:


Of course the early 19th century saw the beginning of the process which saw these families of men and women who had worked the land since time immemorial being systematically cleared from the mountains to poorer areas on the coast...

In reply to Only a hill:

I think you have to remember that if you restrict yourself to English language sources you won't be able to get the whole picture. I am no expert in Gaelic poetry but I know there is mention of Ben Alder summit in Òran na Comhchaig at least and this pre-dates English language records.

A visit to the Highland Archive Centre in Inverness would be very beneficial to you I think.

In reply to Only a hill:

Just been watching an enjoyable programme on BBC 4 about Yellowstone National Park. whilst not the Highlands, it did touch on issues about modern man and the cultural construct of wilderness.

There was a bit where someone observed that, with the reintroduction of wolves, the Park Authorities had tried to recreate what the ecosystem had been like prior to the tourists, yet the wolves were not the top predator, man was- with the removal of the indigenous Indians early on in the Park's history, they had created something else.

I would say that for those traditionally deriving their living from the land there is an obvious direct physicality and linkage in being part of an ecosystem. The individual 'interacts' with the land and produces something which gives them their living.

However, we live in a time where where there is a sort of 'monetarisation' of the ecosystem- a visiting hillgoer will pay for fuel, maybe eat or obtain accomodation locally, and this is said to keep the community going.
But is it any more than the equivalent of the keen aquarist lifting the lid on his fish tank to sprinkle the food in, before shutting the lid and heading off somewhere, thinking fleetingly about the pretty fish.
Probably the fish will die and he can go and get some new ones to be interested in. One fish is much the same as another. He'll always be outside the tank though.

I'd say the thing with the mountains is depth of site specific linkage- that could also come from someone visiting the same area again and again without necessarily residing there. They might not contribute to the local community -an economic parasite- but they're arguably part of the ecosystem.

In reply to Only a hill:
Some of the replies on this thread have been extremely interesting - it's a fascinating topic, particularly the changing nature of our interaction with the land.

I would definitely like to investigate some of the older Gaelic sources. At the moment I don't have time to visit any archives but it's something I will be doing in future.

In reply to Only a hill: Don't you think, with the odd excpetion, Scottish hills are the sort of places people would just go, occasionally, if they lived nearby? Given there have been inhabitants in Scotland for 10000(?) years, I would think most hills were climbed a long, long time ago for either farming, hunting, politics or just curiostity.

In reply to MG:
Yes, I have no doubt of this (as stated further up the thread) but I'm really interested in recorded ascents.

In reply to Only a hill: So to get it clear, you're looking for the earliest records/evidence of people climbing Scottish peaks?

In reply to Only a hill:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Journey_to_the_Western_Islands_of_Scotland

Note in particular:

Once Johnson reached the West Highlands, there were few roads, none at all on the Isle of Skye, and so they travelled by horseback, ***usually along the ridge of a hill*** with a local guide who knew the terrain and the best route for the season.

One hill that Johnson and Boswell certainly ascended was Dun Caan, on Raasay. People say Boswell danced a jig on the summit, but that's not in either Johnson's or Boswell's accounts of their visit, so far as I can see.

In reply to kwoods:

Sorry I haven't been entirely clear, that's what comes from typing forum posts on my phone

What I'm really after is evidence of when the *last* 3,000ft Scottish peak received its first *recorded* ascent, but any and all info on first recorded ascents of hills is also very interesting.

Been reading "Scotland's Mountains Before the Mountaineers" and it contains many fascinating anecdotes.

In reply to Tim Chappell:
Fascinating - thank you. I will have to read that book!

In reply to Only a hill:


Alex--I'm not sure, has anyone yet pointed out the obvious flaw in your question?

The definition of what counts as the class of 3000 ft Scottish peaks changes every time there's a new edition of Munro's Tables. Therefore, so does the definition of what counts as the "last" 3000 ft Scottish peak, which in any case is going to be one of the most obscure.

And when it comes to obscurity, as I'm sure you know, up till about 1900 no one had worked out that A'Mhaighdhean, for example, was a 3000ft peak at all!

You're after the first *documented* ascent of the last unclimbed 3000ft peak in Scotland.

I suspect the only viable answer to this is to look at Sir Hugh's and Andrew Burn's rounds (Munroists ~1 and #2), and try and work out which of the hills that they climbed, no one had recorded climbing before them.

In reply to Tim Chappell:

...So the answer to your question probably won't be the one that Sir Hugh never did, namely the In Pinn, because Collie and Mackenzie had probably done it before Sir Hugh even started Munro bagging. But it will be something obscure that either Munro or Burn climbed...

In reply to kwoods:
Not being a regular UKH user, only just noticed this thread. if it's the Dun Dubh I think it is (just south of the Quiraing, on Bioda Buidhe) it's got an ancient fort on its summit, bits of wall left, so definitely climbed before. Went up it one evening (prob 2003ish, actually), the rock is as appalling as Chris said. Didn't know he was dead, used to know him vaguely at Uni, very unassuming guy. Shame.

In reply to Only a hill:

(mountaineer) "Ah, the first ascent of this glorious mountain!"
(local shepherd) "Hang on, we've been climbing these hills for centuries!"
(mountaineer) "Do you have a flag?"
(local shepherd) "...erm, no?"
(mountaineer) "No flag, no ascent. Right, I'm off to get this first ascent on UKC..."

In reply to andrewmcleod:

Same thing with territory,
Settler, I claim this land, and all it's mineral wealth.
Native -Hoi I live here, and have done for thousands of years!
Settler- No bit of legal paper, no ownership.( shoots native)

In reply to Jim C:

youtube.com/watch?v=uEx5G-GOS1k&