Regular readers will know that I am a little ambivalent about Munro bagging, Corbett or Graham bagging. To me a fine hill is a fine hill, never mind whether it takes 50 minutes to climb or 40. I’ve never been one for lists. And is there anything more boring in the world than the debate as to whether a hike as been promoted or demoted from Munro status. On our recent Cairngorm trip Colin Ibbotson put it well. They should simply stick to Munro’s original list and ignore all of this satellite measurement stuff.

To be fair advocates of bagging point out that baggers do walk through some extraordinary landscape in order to bag their hill and tops. But sometimes I wonder.

On our recent trip Colin and I left Blair Atholl but turned off the main Glen Tilt run to take a couple of kilometres of tarmac to get to our first Munro. This tiny road was surprisingly busy with cars that kept zipping past. It was a lovely day and it suddenly struck me that these people might be baggers.

The Car Park and the Hill

From a distance the bagger’s scar on the mountain was evident, one of those mountain motorways that you can find in Scotland. As we got closer to the hill we came across a car park, full to brimming with the cars of baggers. I wondered just how much they were taking in the countryside around them, dashing up in their cars and then dashing up the line of three Munros before coming home before dark.

The path up to Carn Liath was in a pretty poor state. This was no properly engineered path but a track created by simply dumping loose stones and chippings making the upper reaches quite slippery and slidey.

Of course, Munro baggers have a great time and should be happy celebrate both the land they walk through and their personal achievements. But sometimes I worry about our commitment to sustainability and the land.

To climb these hills from Blair Atholl you don’t need a car! Leave it behind and walk during the longer days if necessary.