UKC

As I was climbing Liathach a couple of weeks ago I was disturbed by the activities of a helicopter flying in and out to collect large (and presumably very strong) bags of rocks that someone must have collected on the slopes of Beinn Dearg.

Why are they doing that? Presumably they want the rocks for building material. But is it really worth the trouble and expense? Surely there are easier ways to get hold of rocks in Scotland?

Sounds like path building, worked on the tourist path on the Ben years ago. Most suitable rocks on nearby scree slopes were loaded into tonne bags and flown to the work sites. Idea is to use local material. 

The mountains there are too high and rocky. They decided to make them flatter and smoother. 😉

I see, that makes some sense. It makes me more forgiving of having had my peace disturbed while hiking, and a lot of the paths I walked on were well-maintained, so I should be grateful for that.

Don't be silly.  They are stockpiling ammunition for the trebuchet ready to defend Hadrian's wall after independence.

They're reopening the Langdale hand axe factories, too...

Sod off. You aren't having Northumbrian sandstone.

Geological vandalism - they did the same thing on Blencathra/Saddleback, raping and pillaging 15,000 year old pristine peri-glacial screes untouched by man, then dumping the stones for those awful urban staircases in the wrong geological locale. There is a world-famous metamorphic aureole on Blencathra and they completely buggered up the layout of the naturally occurring rock-types. They are ignorant vandals if the same thing is happening that you described.

DC

Those urban staircases do take away a bit of the wildness of the mountains, but they are better than a footpath that keeps getting wider and wider as people try to avoid the muddy eroded sections in the middle.

Hopefully they had a geological consultant to advise them where to take the rocks from.

The fools.  Those rocks were specifically put there as ballast.  At some point they'll tip the balance and it will float away into the sky

Probably the same ones involved in Stonehenge. 

"Yep, bluestones will be fine"

Brilliant!

I think you'll find that aliens flew them over to Wiltshire. Or the druids did.