Back in 1891 Sir Hugh Munro produced his Tables of Scottish
mountains over 3,000 feet high using the maps and surveying techniques of the
time. These often weren’t very precise leading to doubts about hills just above
or just below the magic 3,000 feet (914.4 metres). Modern surveying equipment
and methods can measure hills much more accurately. The Ordnance Survey however
only gives heights to the nearest metre. So a 914-metre summit might be 3,000
feet or might not.
In 2006 The Munro Society decided to settle the matter by
measuring accurately the two hills the OS said were 914 metres high, Beinn
Dearg in Torridon and Foinaven. This developed into eight years of measuring
the heights of all nineteen hills around 914.4 metres, a process that became
known as “The Heightings”.
This book, produced for the 100th anniversary of
the death of Sir Hugh Munro, tells the fascinating story of The Heightings with
contributions from many of the members of The Munro Society involved plus the
surveyors themselves. There are also chapters on how Munro constructed his
Tables, the changes to the Tables since Munro’s time, and how modern surveying
techniques work.
Measuring the hills involved carrying heavy equipment to the
summit and then waiting for hours while readings were taken. Sometimes the
weather wasn’t kind, but the surveys still went ahead except on the very first trip,
the only one I was on, when we turned back due to the stormy weather.
Excellent photographs give a real sense of what The
Heightings were like, showing the surveys taking place, the hills themselves,
and the people involved, often wrapped up warmly or lying in bivi bags as they
waited for the survey to be completed.
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| Heading up Beinn Dearg on the first Heighting |
Given the subject matter this could have been rather a dry
book. It isn’t. It’s entertaining as well as informative and contains some
humorous stories. My favourite comes at the end of The Heightings when a German
TV company films a pretend Heighting (a real one would take too long) as part
of a documentary on Scottish life and culture with an emphasis on the
idiosyncratic. Iain A. Robertson, the author of this chapter, comments ‘how any
group of persons who climbed mountains because they were above a certain height
and, moreover, went to great lengths to check these heights, could be regarded
as idiosyncratic is difficult to fathom’.
